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AMERICAN PATRIOTIC PROSE AND VERSE 



AMERICAN PATRIOTIC 
PROSE AND VERSE 



SELECTED AND EDITED BY 

RUTH DAVIS .STEVENS 

AND 

DAVID HARRISON STEVENS, Ph.D. 
Instructor in English, The University of Chicago 




CHICAGO 
A. C. McCLURG & CO. 

1917 






Copyright 

A. C. McClurg & Co. 

1917 



Published October, 1917 



// 



-j/i 



' W. F. HALL PRINTING COMPANY, CHICA«iO 



OCT -9 1917 



IC1.A473930 



PREFACE 

We may ardently hope for the day when war shall 
be no more, but so long as our race endures we shall 
never forget the illustrious dead who have fought 
for this glorious land of ours. It would be most 
inglorious to deny honor to our heroes. Their 
names will be remembered by Americans long after 
the war virtues have passed away, and their valorous 
deeds will serve as everlasting memorials of the cost 
of human liberty. Whatever may become our 
American ideal of service to country, the patriots 
who brought honor to the flag will continue to occupy 
their high places in our national history. 

These leaders in American life and their deeds 
of service have been praised by our poets; writers 
of prose have made memorable the stories of council 
chamber and camp. In their works exists today the 
most stirring record of our national life, and from 
this literature the generations of tomorrow will gain 
inspiration to higher patriotism. With this belief 
the editors have tried to present the material in a 
way most useful to the youth of America. 

In the following pages the selections are arranged 
chronologically, so that the record of American his- 
tory may be traced roughly from page to page. 
In addition to this material appears something on 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

each distinctively American holiday of patriotic 
sort. With the selections are given brief biograph- 
ical notes and authentic data regarding the circum- 
stances under which the pieces were composed. In 
every case the aim has been only to make clear, not 
to burden the reader with needless comment. In 
spite of the omission of much that might have been 
included, it is hoped that herein will be found every 
familiar selection that records a story of brave deeds, 
patriotic endeavor, or undying patriotism. 

Chicago The Editors. 



GUIDE TO TITLES AND AUTHORS 

PAGE 

America Samuel Francis Smith z 

American Flag, The Joseph Rodman Drake 141 

American Government Unique Daniel Webster 6a 

America Resurgent Wendell Phillips Stafford 168 

Ames^ Fisher 

What Is Patriotism ? 52 

Arsenal at Springfield, The. .Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 108 

Battle-Field, The William Cullen Bryant 37 

Battle Hymn of the Republic Julia Ward Howe 78 

Bennett, Henry Holcomb 

The Flag Goes By 151 

Blue and the Gray, The Francis Miles Finch 113 

Boston Hymn Ralph Waldo Emerson 85 

Brooklyn Navy Yard Address, The Woodrow Wilson 163 

Bryant, William Cullen 

The Battle-Field 37 

The Death of Lincoln 95 

The Twenty-Second of December 13 

Washington 45 

Building of the Ship, The. . .Henry Wadsworth Longfellow i 

Butterworth, Hezekiah 

Crown Our Washington 50 

Carryl, Guy Wetmore 

When the Great Gray Ships Come In 137 

Centennial Hymn John Greenleaf Whittler 119 

Columbus Edward Everett Hale 9 

Columbus Joaquin Miller 4 

Concord Hymn Ralph Waldo Emerson 30 

Crown Our Washington Hezekiah Butterworth 50 

Cuba Libre Joaquin Miller 131 

Cutter, George Washington 

E Pluribus Unum 146 

vii 



viii American Patriotic Prose and Verse 



PAGE 

Dear Land of All My Love Sidney Lanier 152 

Death of Lincoln, The William Cullen Bryant 95 

Depew, Chauncey Mitchell 

Washington and Lincoln 98 

Discovery of America, The Washington Irving 6 

Drake, Joseph Rodman 

The American Flag 141 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo 

Boston Hymn 85 

Concord Hymn 30 

Fourth of July Ode 126 

E Pluribus Unum George Washington Cutter 146 

Eutaw Springs Philip Freneau 43 

Farewell Address (Selection) George Washington 39 

Finch, Francis Miles 

The Blue and the Gray 112 

FinleYj John H. 

The Soldiers' Recessional 116 

First Inaugural Address (Selection) ... .Thomas Jefferson 57 

Flag Goes By, The Henry Holcomb Bennett 151 

Flag of Our Country, The Frank Lebby Stanton 140 

Flower of Liberty, The Oliver Wendell Holmes 144 

Fourth of July, The ^ John Pierpont 128 

Fourth of July Ode Ralph Waldo Emerson 126 

Freneau, Philip 

Eutaw Springs 43 

Garrison, William Lloyd 

Liberty for All 68 

Gettysburg Address, The Abraham Lincoln 94 

Gilder, Richard Watson 

Inauguration Day 153 

On the Life-Mask of Abraham Lincoln 104 

Sherman 89 

"Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" Patrick Henry 21 

Hail, Columbia Joseph Hopkinson 54 

Hale, Edward Everett 

Columbus 9 

Harrison, Benjamin 

True Patriotism 129 



Guide to Titles and Authors ix 



PAGE 

Henderson, Daniel M. 

The Road to France 169 

Henry, Patrick 

"Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" 21 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell 

The Flower of Liberty 144 

Ode for Washington's Birthday 46 

Old Ironsides 67 

Union and Liberty 80 

Hopkinson, Joseph 

Hail, Columbia 54 

HosMER, Frederick L. 

O Beautiful, My Country 157 

Howe, Julia Ward 

Battle Hymn of the Republic 78 

Our Country 14 

Robert E. Lee 93 

Hubbard, Elbert 

A Message to Garcia (Selection) 133 

Inauguration Day Richard Watson Gilder 153 

Independence Bell — July 4, 1776 Anonymous 33 

Irving, Washington 

The Discovery of America 6 

Jefferson, Thomas 

First Inaugural Address (Selection) 57 

Key, Francis Scott 

The Star-Spangled Banner 60 

Lanier, Sidney 

Dear Land of All My Love 152 

Liberty and Union Inseparable Daniel Webster 64 

Liberty Enlightening the World 

Edmund Clarence Stedman 155 

Liberty for All William Lloyd Garrison 68 

Lincoln, Abraham 

The Gettysburg Address 94 

Lincoln, The Man of the People Edwin Markham 105 

Longfellow, Henry Wads worth 

The Arsenal at Springfield 108 

The Building of the Ship i 

Paul Revere's Ride 24 



X American Patriotic Prose and Verse 



PAGE 

Lowell, James Russell 

Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration 

(Selection) loi 

The Present Crisis 71 

Stanzas on Freedom 69 

Washington 49 

Markham, Edwin 

Lincoln, The Man of the People 105 

Message to Garcia, A (Selection) Elbert Hubbard 133 

Miller, Joaquin 

Columbus 4 

Cuba Libre 131 

Nathan Hale William Ordway Partridge 36 

O Beautiful, My Country Frederick L. Hosmer 157 

O Captain ! My Captain ! Walt Whitman 96 

Ode for Decoration Day, An (Selection) .. .Henry Peterson iii 

Ode for Washington's Birthday. . . .Oliver Wendell Holmes 46 
Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration (Selection) . . . 

James Russell Lowell loi 

Old Flag Hubbard Parker 149 

Old Ironsides Oliver Wendell Holmes 67 

On the Life-Mask of Abraham Lincoln 

Richard Watson Gilder 104 

One Beneath Old Glory Anonymous 135 

One Country Frank Lebby Stanton n8 

Our Country Julia Ward Howe 14 

Our Country John Greenleaf Whittier 121 

Parker, Hubbard 

Old Flag 149 

Partridge, William Ordway 

Nathan Hale 36 

Passing of the Indian, The Charles Sprague 18 

Paul Revere's Ride Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 24 

Peterson, Henry 

An Ode for Decoration Day (Selection) m 

Phillips, Wendell 

Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land 82 

Pierpont, John 

The Fourth of July 128 

The Pilgrim Fathers 16 



Guide to Titles and Authors xi 



PAGE 

Pilgrim Fathers, The John Pierpont i6 

Present Crisis, The James Russell Lowell 71 

Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land. . .Wendell Phillips 83 
Rankin, Jeremiah Eames 

The Word of God to Leyden Came 10 

Right of the People to Rule, The Theodore Roosevelt 159 

Road to France, The Daniel M. Henderson 169 

Robert E. Lee Julia Ward Howe 93 

Roosevelt, Theodore 

The Right of the People to Rule 159 

Ryan, Abram Joseph 

The Sword of Robert Lee 91 

Seeger, Alan 

A Soldier's Letter 167 

Sherman Richard Watson Gilder 89 

Sherwood, Kate Brownlee 

We Keep Memorial Day 115 

Smith, Samuel Francis 

America 2 

Soldier's Letter, A Alan Seeger 167 

Soldiers' Recessional, The John H. Finley 116 

Song for Lexington, A Robert Kelly Weeks 31 

Sprague, Charles 

The Passing of the Indian 18 

Stafford, Wendell Phillips 

America Resurgent 168 

Stanton, Frank Lebby 

The Flag of Our Country 140 

One Country 118 

Stanzas on Freedom James Russell Lowell 69 

Star-Spangled Banner, The. Francis Scott Key 60 

Stedman, Edmund Clarence 

Liberty Enlightening the World 155 

Sword of Robert Lee, The Abram Joseph Ryan 91 

True Patriotism Benjamin Harrison 139 

Twenty-Second of December, The. .William Cullen Bryant 13 

Union and Liberty Oliver Wendell Holmes 80 

Washington William Cullen Bryant 45 



xii American Patriotic Prose and Verse 



PAGE 

Washington James Russell Lowell 49 

Washington and Lincoln Chauncey Mitchell Depew 98 

Washington, George 

Farewell Address (Selection) 39 

We Keep Memorial Day Kate Brownlee Sherwood 115 

Webster, Daniel 

American Government Unique 62 

Liberty and Union Inseparable 64 

Weeks, Robert Kelly 

A Song for Lexington 31 

What Is Patriotism ? Fisher Ames 52 

When the Great Gray Ships Come In 

Guy Wetmore Carryl 137 
Whitman, Walt 

O Captain ! My Captain ! 96 

Whittier, John Greenleaf 

Centennial Hymn 119 

Our Country 121 

Wilson, Woodrow 

The Brooklyn Navy Yard Address 162 

Word of God to Leyden Came, The 

Jeremiah Eames Rankin 10 



AMERICAN PATRIOTIC PROSE AND VERSE 



From "THE BUILDING OF THE SHIF'^ 

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) is perhaps 
the poet most beloved by the school children of America. 
His simple narrative poems present vivid pictures of Colo- 
nial life. In all his work one can see the hand of a kind- 
hearted, youth-loving American gentleman, whose greatest 
joy came through telling native tales for youthful readers. 
The present poem, written in 1849, shows his high patriotic 
idealism and also his deep reverence for the American 
Republic. 

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! 
Sail on, O Union, strong and great ! 
Humanity with all its fears, 
,With all the hopes of future years, 
Is hanging breathless on thy fate! 
We know what Master laid thy keel. 
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, 
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope. 
What anvils rang, what hammers beat, 
In what a forge and what a heat 
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope ! 
Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 



1 From The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Long- 
fellow. Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Hough- 
ton MifSin Company. 

1 



2 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 

'Tis but the flapping of the sail, 

And not a rent made by the gale ! 

In spite of rock and tempest's roar, 

In spite of false lights on the shore. 

Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea ! 

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee. 

Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, 

Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, 

Are all with thee — are all with thee ! 



AMERICA 

SAMUEL FRANCIS SMITH 

Samuel Francis Smith (1808-1895), minister, editor, 
and author, wrote numerous books for juvenile readers and 
many of our most famiHar hymns. As the author of 
"America" he has found a lasting place in the hearts of 
the American people. This hymn was written in February, 
1832, and was first sung in public July 4, the same year, 
at a children's festival held in Park Street Church, Boston. 

My country, 'tis of thee, 
Sweet land of liberty. 

Of thee I sing; 
Land where my fathers died. 
Land of the pilgrims' pride, 
From every mountain-side 

Let freedom ring. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 3 

My native country, thee, 
Land of the noble free — 

Thy name I love ; 
I love thy rocks and rills. 
Thy woods and templed hills; 
My heart with rapture thrills 

Like that above. 

Let music swell the breeze, 
And ring from all the trees, 

Sweet Freedom's song; 
Let mortal tongues awake, 
Let all that breathe partake. 
Let rocks their silence break — - 

The sound prolong. 

Our fathers' God, to Thee, 
Author of liberty, 

To Thee we sing; 
Long may our land be bright 
With Freedom's holy light; 
Protect us by Thy might. 

Great God, our King. 



4 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 



COLUMBUS^ 

JOAQUIN MILLER 

Cincinnatus Hiner (Joaquin) Miller (1841-1913) was a 
native of Indiana, but spent most of his life among the 
picturesque western scenes made known through his prose 
and poetry. His stanzas on Columbus have the stirring 
vigor found in all his writings ; their poetic merit is due to 
the fine enthusiasm of the poet in his imaginative picturing 
of the famous voyage. 

Behind him lay the gray Azores, 

Behind, the Gates of Hercules; 
Before him not the ghost of shores. 

Before him only shoreless seas. 
The good mate said : *'Now must we pray, 

For lo ! the very stars are gone. 
Brave Adm'r'l, speak; what shall I say?" 

"Why, say *Sail on ! sail on ! and on !' " 

"My men grow mutinous day by day; 

My men grow ghastly, wan, and weak." 
The stout mate thought of home ; a spray 
:^ Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. 
"What shall I say, brave Adm'r'l, say. 

If we sight naught but seas at dawn?" 
"Why, you shall say at break of day, 

'Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!' " 



* Permission to use secured from the Harr Wagner Publishing Coh 
San Francisco, Cal., Publishers of Joaquin Miller's complete works. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 5 

They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow. 

Until at last the blanched mate said : 
"Why, now not even God would know 

Should I and all my men fall dead. 
These very winds forget their way, 

For God from these dread seas is gone. 
Now speak, brave Adm'r'l, speak and say" — 

He said : "Sail on ! sail on ! and on !" 

They sailed, they sailed. Then spake the mate : 

"This mad sea shows his teeth tonight. 
He curls his lip, he lies in wait. 

He lifts his teeth, as if to bite ! 
Brave AdmVl, say but one good word : 

What shall we do when hope is gone ?" 
The words leapt like a leaping sword : 

"Sail on ! sail on ! sail on ! and on !" 

Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck. 

And peered through darkness. Ah, that night 
Of all dark nights! And then a speck — 

A light ! a light ! at last a light ! 
It grew, a star-lit flag unfurled ! 

It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. 
He gained a world ; he gave that world 

Its grandest lesson : "On ! sail on !" 



6 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA^ 

WASHINGTON IRVING 

Washington Irving (1783-1859), essayist, historian, etc., 
was doubtless naturally attracte 1 by the story of Columbus, 
for it concerns the two countries Irving knew best — his 
native America and Spain. 

It was early in the morning of Friday, the third 
of August, 1492, that Columbus set sail from the bar 
of Saltes,^ a small island formed by the rivers Odiel 
and Tinto, in front of Palos, steering for the Canary 
Islands, from whence he intended to strike due west. 
As a guide by which to sail, he had the conjectural 
map, or chart, sent him by Paolo Toscanelli of 
Florence.^ In this it is supposed the coasts of 
Europe and Africa, from the south of Ireland to the 
end of Guinea, were delineated as immediately oppo- 
site to the extremity of Asia, while the great island 
of Cipango, described by Marco Polo,^ lay between 
them, fifteen hundred miles from the Asiatic coast. 
At this island Columbus expected first to arrive. 
. . . . On the seventh of October, they had come 
seven hundred and fifty leagues, the distance at 



1 From Life and Voyages of Columbus. G. P. Putnam's Sons. Used 
by permission. 

2 On the southwestern coast of Spain. 

3 A famous astronomer, who made the map used by Columbus on his 
voyage to the new world. 

* Marco Polo (1254-1324), a Venetian, who spent thirty-five years 
in travel through the countries of Asia. The stories of his adventures 
reveal strange experiences in lands before then almost unknown to 
western Europe. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 7 

which Columbus had computed to find the island of 
Cipango. There were great flights of small field 
birds to the southwest, which seemed to indicate 
some neighboring land in that direction where they 
were sure of food and a resting-place. Yielding to 
the solicitations of Martin Alonzo Pinzon and his 
brothers, Columbus, on the evening of the seventh, 
altered his course, therefore, to the west-southwest. 
As he advanced, the signs of land increased; the 
birds came singing about the ships, and herbage 
floated by as fresh and green as if recently from 
shore. . When, however, on the evening of the third 
day of this new course, the seamen beheld the sun 
go down upon a shoreless horizon, they again broke 
forth into loud clamors, and insisted upon abandon- 
ing the voyage. Columbus endeavored to pacify 
them by gentle words and liberal promises ; but find- 
ing these only increased their violence, he assumed 
a different tone, and told them it was useless to 
murmur : the expedition had been sent by the sov- 
ereign to seek the Indies, and happen what 
might, he was determined to persevere until, by the 
blessing of God, he should accomplish his enter- 
prise. 

He was now at open defiance with his crew, and 
his situation would have been desperate, but fortu- 
nately the manifestations of land on the following 
day were such as no longer to admit of doubt. 
A green fish, such as keeps about rocks, swam by 



8 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

the ships ; and a branch of thorn, with berries on it, 
floated by. They picked up also a reed, a small 
board, and, above all, a staff artificially carved. All 
gloom and murmuring was now at an end, and 
throughout the day each one was on the watch for 
the long-sought land. 

In the evening when, according to custom, the 
mariners had sung the Salve Regina,^ or vesper hymn 
to the Virgin, Columbus made an impressive address 
to his crew, pointing out the goodness of God in 
thus conducting them by soft and favoring breezes 
across a tranquil ocean to the promised land. He 
expressed a strong confidence of making land that 
very night, and ordered that a vigilant lookout 
should be kept from the forecastle, promising to 
whosoever should make the discovery, a doublet of 
velvet, in addition to the pension to be given by the 

sovereigns They continued on their course 

until two in the morning, when a gun from the Pinta 
gave the joyful signal of land. It was first discov- 
ered, by a mariner named Rodriguez Bermejo, resi- 
dent of Triana, a suburb of Seville,^ but native of 
Alcala de la Guadaira; but the reward was after- 
wards adjudged to the Admiral for having previ- 
ously seen the light. The land was now clearly seen 



1 "Hail, O queen!'* The expression is from a Roman Catholic hymn 
to the Virgin Mary. 

2 One of the most flourishing commercial cities of old Spain. The 
books of Columbus are still preserved there, and his son Fernando is 
buried within the city. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 9 

about two leagues distant, whereupon they took in 
sail and laid to, waiting impatiently for the dawn. 

The thoughts and feelings of Columbus in this 
little space of time must have been tumultuous and 
intense. At length, in spite of every difficulty and 
danger, he had accomplished his object. The great 
mystery of the ocean was revealed ; his theory, which 
had been the scoff of sages, was triumphantly estab- 
lished ; he had secured to himself a glory which must 
be as durable as the world itself. 



COLUMBUS 

EDWARD EVERETT HALE 

4^ 
Edward Everett Hale (1822- 1909), clergyman, writer, 
and publicist, led a life of patriotic activity terminating 
with six years of service as chaplain of the United States 
Senate. 

Give me white paper! 
This which you use is black and rough with smears 
Of sweat and grime and fraud and blood and tears. 
Crossed with the story of men's sins and fears, 
Of battle and of famine all these years. 

When all God's children had forgot their birth. 
And drudged and fought and died like beasts 
of earth. 



10 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

"Give me white paper !" 
One storm-trained seaman listened to the word; 
What no man saw he saw; he heard what no man 
heard. 
In answer he compelled the sea 
To eager man to tell 
The secret she had kept so well ! 
Left blood and guilt and tyranny behind — 
Sailing still west the hidden shore to find ; 

For all mankind that unstained scroll unfurled, 
Where God might write anew the story of the 
World. 



THE WORD OF GOD TO LEYDEN CAMEi 

JEREMIAH EAMES RANKIN 

Jeremiah Eames Rankin (1828-1904) in this poem has 
expressed the feeling of the Pilgrims while in Holland, 
whither they had fled for religious freedom. Though for 
eleven years Leyden had served as a safe abode, these brave 
Englishmen were unwilling to become Dutch citizens ; con- 
sequently their thoughts turned to the new land of the west. 
Mr. Rankin was the author of many other poems and 
hymns, and one of the latter, "God Be With You Till We 
Meet Again," is widely popular. 

The word of God to Leyden came, 

Dutch town by Zuyder Zee: 
Rise up, my children of no name, 

My kings and priests to be. 



^ Used by permission of Edith Rankin White. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 11 

There is an empire in the West, 

Which I will soon unfold; 
A thousand harvests in her breast, 

Rocks ribbed with iron and gold. 

Rise up, my children, time is ripe ! 

Old things are passed away. 
Bishops and kings from earth I wipe ; 

Too long they've had their day. 
A little ship have I prepared 

To bear you o'er the seas; 
And in your souls, my will declared. 

Shall grow by slow degrees. 

Beneath my throne the martyrs cry : 

I hear their voice. How long? 
It mingles with their praises high. 

And with their victor song. 
The thing they longed and waited for, 

But died without the sight ; 
Lo, this shall be ! I wrong abhor. 

The world I'll now set right. 

Leave, then, the hammer and the loom, 

You've other work to do ; 
For Freedom's commonwealth there's room, 

And you shall build it, too. 
I'm tired of bishops and their pride, 

I'm tired of kings as well; 



12 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Henceforth I take the people's side, 
And with the people dwell. 

Tear off the mitre from the priest, 

And from the king, his crown; 
Let all my captives be released ; 

Lift up whom men cast down. 
Their pastors let the people choose. 

And choose their rulers too; 
Whom they select I'll not refuse, 

But bless the work they do. 

The Pilgrims rose at this, God's word, 

And sailed the wintry seas : 
With their own flesh nor blood conferred. 

Nor thought of wealth or ease. 
They left the towers of Ley den town, 

They left the Zuyder Zee; 
And where they cast their anchor down, 

Rose Freedom's realm to be. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 13 
THE TWENTY-SECOND OF DECEMBER 

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) was somewhat of a 
youthful prodigy. He wrote verses at the age of eight, 
and produced "Thanatopsis" before he was eighteen years 
old. Busy years of newspaper work later kept him from 
writing poetry except at rare intervals, but what he did 
produce shows his deep love of nature ; active service as an 
editor could not keep his mind completely from the woods 
and fields. 

This poem commemorates the day on which the Pilgrim 
Fathers, one hundred and two days after leaving Plymouth, 
England, landed on a barren coast in the face of a wintry 
storm. One hundred and two people started in the May- 
flower; during the voyage one died and one was born. 

Wild was the day; the wintry sea 

Moaned sadly on New England's strand, 

When first the thoughtful and the free, 
Our fathers, trod the desert land. 

They little thought how pure a light, 

With years, should gather round that day; 

How love should keep their memories bright. 
How wide a realm their sons should sway. 

Green are their bays ; but greener still 

Shall round their spreading fame be wreathed, 
And regions, now untrod, shall thrill 

With reverence when their names are breathed.i 



14 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Till where the sun, with softer fires, 
Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep. 

The children of the Pilgrim sires 

This hallowed day like us shall keep. 



OUR COUNTRY 

JULIA WARD HOWE 

Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) was for more than a 
half-century widely known as an eminent lecturer and 
writer in behalf of abolition, woman suffrage, and prison 
reform. Her entire life was a proof of her love for 
American institutions and ideals. "Our Country" was 
written in response to an appeal during war time for a 
national song. 

On primal rocks she wrote her name, 
Her towers were reared on holy graves; 

The golden seed that bore her came 

Swift-winged with prayer o'er ocean waves. 

The Forest bowed his solemn crest. 

And open flung his sylvan doors ; 
Meek Rivers led the appointed Guest 

To clasp the wide-embracing shores; 

Till, fold by fold, the broidered Land 
To swell her virgin vestments grew, 

.While sages, strong in heart and hand, 
Her virtue's fiery girdle drew. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 15 

O Exile of the wrath of Kings ! 

O Pilgrim Ark of Liberty ! 
The refuge of divinest things, 

Their record must abide in thee. 

First in the glories of thy front 

Let the crown jewel, Truth, be found; 

Thy right hand fling, with generous wont. 
Love's happy chain to furthest bound. 

Let Justice, with the faultless scales. 
Hold fast the worship of thy sons; 

Thy Commerce spread her shining sails 
Where no dark tide of rapine runs. 

So link thy ways to those of God, 

So follow firm the heavenly laws, 
That stars may greet thee, warrior browed, 

And storm-sped angels hail thy cause. 

O Land, the measure of our prayers, 
Hope of the world, in grief and wrong! 

Be thine the blessing of the years, 
The gift of faith, the crown of song! 



16 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 
THE PILGRIM FATHERS 

JOHN PIERPONT 

John Pierpont (1785-1866) was a New England clergy- 
man, noteworthy as a zealous temperance and anti-slavery 
speaker. What little poetry he wrote was in a patriotic 
vein, such as these stanzas on the Pilgrim Fathers. 

The Pilgrim Fathers — where are they? 

The waves that brought them o'er 
Still roll in the bay, and throw their spray 

As they break along the shore ; 
Still roll in the bay, as they rolled that day 

When the Mayflower moored below ; 
When the sea around was black with storms, 

And white the shore with snow. 

The mists that wrapped the Pilgrim's sleep 

Still brood upon the tide; 
And his rocks yet keep their watch by the deep 

To stay its waves of pride. 
But the snow-white sail that he gave to the gale, 

When the heavens looked dark, is gone — 
As an angel's wing through an opening cloud 

Is seen, and then withdrawn. 

The pilgrim exile — sainted name! 

The hill whose icy brow 
Rejoiced, when he came, in the morning's flame. 

In the morning's flame burns now. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 17 

And the moon's cold light, as it lay that night 

On the hillside and the sea, 
Still lies where he lay his houseless head — 

But the Pilgrim — where is he? 

The Pilgrim Fathers are at rest : 

When summer's throned on high. 
And the world's warm breast is in verdure dressed — 

Go, stand on the hill where they lie. 
The earliest ray of the go'lden day 

On that hallowed spot is cast ; 
And the evening sun as he leaves the world, 

Looks kindly on that spot last. 

The Pilgrim spirit has not fled : 

It walks in noon's broad light; 
And it watches the bed of the glorious dead, 

With the holy stars, by night. 
It watches the bed of the brave who have bled 

And still guard this ice-bound shore. 
Till the waves of the bay where the Mayflower lay 

Shall foam and freeze no more. 



18 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 
THE PASSING OF THE INDIAN^ 

CHARLES SPRAGUE 

Charles Sprague (1791-1875), a banker of Boston, was 
so devoted to his native state that he is said only once to 
have passed its borders. For his public spirit and love of 
New England traditions he was held in high esteem by his 
fellow citizens. In 1825 he was chosen as orator for the 
semi-centennial Fourth of July celebration of the beginning 
of the Revolution; his speech, "American Independence," 
included the passage printed below. The occasion gained 
added interest from the fact that shortly before, Lafayette 
had visited Boston to lay the corner-stone of the Bunker 
Hill Monument. Moreover, in attendance at the celebration 
were many Revolutionary soldiers and the three surviving 
signers of the Declaration of Independence — Thomas 
Jefferson, John Adams, and Charles Carroll. Mr. Sprague 
had a personal inspiration in the recollection that his own 
father had had a hand in the Boston Tea Party in 1773. 

.... Not many generations ago, where you now 
sit, circled with all that exalts and embellishes civil- 
ized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind, and 
the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here lived and 
loved another race of beings. Beneath the same 
sun that rolls over your heads the Indian hunter 
pursued the panting deer ; gazing on the same moon 
that smiles for you, the Indian lover wooed his 
dusky mate. 

Here the wigwam blaze beamed on the tender 
and helpless, the council fire glared on the wise and 



^ From The Poetical and Prose Writings of Charles Sprague. A. Will- 
iams and Company, 1876. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 19 

f ~. _ — ^^ 

daring. Now they dipped their noble limbs in your 
sedgy lakes, and now they paddled the light canoe 
along your rocky shores. Here they warred; the 
echoing whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying death 
song, all were here; and when the tiger strife was 
over, here curled the smoke of peace. 

Here, too, they worshiped; and from many a 
dark bosom went up a pure prayer to the Great 
Spirit. He had not written his laws for them on 
tables of stone, but He had traced them on the tables 
of their hearts. The poor child of nature knew 
not the God of revelation, but the God of the 
universe he acknowledged in everything around. 

He beheld Him in the star that sunk in beauty 
behind his lonely dwelling; in the sacred orb that 
flamed on him from His midday throne ; in the flower 
that snapped in the morning breeze ; in the lofty pine 
that had defied a thousand whirlwinds ; in the timid 
warbler that never left its native grove; in the fear- 
less eagle whose untired pinion was wet in clouds; 
in the worm that crawled at his foot ; and in his own 
matchless form, glowing with a spark of that light 
to whose mysterious Source he bent, in humble, 
though blind, adoration. 

And all this has passed away. Across the ocean 
came a pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and 
death. The former were sown for you; the latter 
sprang up in the path of the simple native. Two 
hundred years have changed the character of a 



20 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

great continent, and blotted forever from its face a 
whole, peculiar people. Art has usurped the bowers 
of nature, and the children of education have been 
too powerful for the tribes of the ignorant. 

Here and there a stricken few remain; but how 
unlike their bold, untamed, untamable progenitors! 
The Indian! of falcon glance and lion bearing, the 
theme of the touching ballad, the hero of the pathetic 
tale, is gone ! and his degraded offspring crawl upon 
the soil where he walked in majesty, to remind us 
how miserable is man when the foot of the conqueror 
is on his neck ! 

As a race they have withered from the land. 
Their arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, 
their cabins are in the dust. Their council fire has 
long since gone out on the shore, and their war cry 
is fast dying to the untrodden West. Slowly and 
sadly they climb the distant mountains, and read 
their doom in the setting sun. They are shrinking 
before the mighty tide which is pressing them away ; 
they must soon hear the roar of the last wave, which 
will settle over them forever. Ages hence, the 
inquisitive white man will ponder on the structure 
of their disturbed remains and wonder to what 
manner of persons they belonged. They will live 
only in the songs and chronicles of their extermi- 
nators. Let these be faithful to their rude virtues 
as men, and pay due tribute to their unhappy fate 
as a people. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 21 
"GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH'* 

PATRICK HENRY 

Patrick Henry (1736-1799), a Virginian, ranks with 
Fisher Ames as one of the greatest orators of the Revolu- 
tionary period. Nothing in his career won so much praise 
from men of his own day as the speech deUvered before 
the Second Revolutionary Convention of Virginia on 
March 23, 1775. The speech has been preserved to us only 
through the recollection of his hearers, particularly from 
the memory of Judge John Tyler and Judge St. George 
Tucker. So stirring were these famous words that William 
Wirt wrote of their effect, "No murmur of applause was 
heard. The effect was too deep. After the trance of a 
moment several members started from their seats. The 
cry, 'To arms !' seemed to quiver on every lip, and gleam 
from every eye. They became impatient of speech- — their 
souls were on fire for action." 

.... Mr. President,, it is natural to man to 
indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut 
our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the 
song of the siren till she transforms us into beasts. 
Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and 
arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to 
be of the number of those who, having eyes, see 
not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so 
nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my 
part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am 
willing to know the whole truth ; to know the worst, 
and to provide for it. 

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, 
and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no 



22 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

way of judging of the future but by the past. And 
judging by the past, I wish to know what there has 
been in the conduct of the British ministry for the 
last ten years to justify those hopes with which 
gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves 
and the house. Is it that insidious smile with which 
our petition^ has been lately received ? Trust it not, 
sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not 
yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask your- 
selves how this gracious reception of our petition 
comports with those warlike preparations which 
cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets 
and armies necessary to a work of love and recon- 
ciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling 
to be reconciled that force must be called in to win 
back love ? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These 
are the implements of war and subjugation — the 
last arguments to which kings resort. 

.... They tell us, sir, that we are weak — 
unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. 
But when shall we be stronger? Will it be next 
week, or the next year? Will it be when we are 
totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be 
stationed in every house ? Shall we gather strength 
by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the 
means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on 
our backs, and hugging the delusive phantoms of 



iThe "Petition of Congress to the King," voted on October 25, 1774. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 23 

hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand 
and foot ? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper 
use of those means which the God of nature hath 
placed in our power. Three millions of people, 
armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a 
country as that which we possess, are invincible to 
any force which our enemy can send against us. 
Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battle alone. 
There is a just God who presides over the destinies 
of us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; 
it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, 
sir, we have no election. If we were base enough 
to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the 
contest; there is no retreat but in submission and 
slavery. Our chains are forged. Their clanking 
may be heard on the plains of Boston.^ The war 
is inevitable. And let it come! I repeat, sir, let 
it come! 

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentle- 
men may cry peace, peace — but there is no peace. 
The war is actually begun! The next gale that 
sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the 
clash of resounding arms ! Our brethren are already 
in the field ! Why stand we idle here ? What is it 
that gentlemen wish ? What would they have ? Is 
life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at 
the price of chains and slavery ? Forbid it, Almighty 



1 General Gage began to fortify Boston during the autumn of 1774. 



24 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

God ! I know not what course others may take, but 
as for me, give me liberty or give me death ! 

' PAUL REVERE'S RIDE^ 

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

In this poem Longfellow has made memorable the name 
of Paul Revere, one of the most patriotic citizens of Boston 
in Revolutionary days. Paul Revere was by profession a 
goldsmith and engraver, and many pieces of his work are 
still on exhibition in Boston. He did much to advance 
plans for American liberty, but nothing endears him to his 
countrymen more than the action made famous by Long- 
fellow's poem. While on this eventful ride he was captured 
by the British between Lexington and Concord, but was 
soon set free. 

Listen, my children, and you shall hear 

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, 

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; 

Hardly a man is now alive 

Who remembers that famous day and year. 

He said to his friend, "If the British march 

By land or sea from the town tonight, 

Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch 

Of the North Church tower as a signal light — 

One, if by land, and two, if by sea; 

And I on the opposite shore will be. 



iprom The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Long- 
fellow. Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Hough- 
ton Mifflin Company. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 25 

Ready to ride and spread the alarm 
Through every Middlesex village and farm, 
For the country folk to be up and to arm." 

Then he said, *'Good-night !" and with muffled oar 

Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, 

Just as the moon rose over the bay, 

Where swinging wide at her moorings lay 

The Somerset, British man-of-war; 

A phantom ship, with each mast and spar 

Across the moon like a prison bar, 

And a huge black hulk, that was magnified 

By its own reflection in the tide. 

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street. 
Wanders and watches with eager ears. 
Till in the silence around him he hears 
The muster of men at the barrack door. 
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet. 
And the measured tread of the grenadiers. 
Marching down to their boats on the shore. 

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church, 

By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread. 

To the belfry-chamber overhead. 

And startled the pigeons from their perch 

On the sombre rafters, that round him made 

Masses and moving shapes of shade — 

By the trembling ladder, steep and tall. 



26 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

To the highest window in the wall, 
Where he paused to listen and look down 
A moment on the roofs of the town. 
And the moonlight flowing over all. 

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead, 

In their night-encampment on the hill. 

Wrapped in silence so deep and still 

That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread, 

The watchful night wind, as it went 

Creeping along from tent to tent. 

And seeming to whisper, "All is well !" 

A moment only he feels the spell 

Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread 

Of the lonely belfry and the dead; 

For suddenly all his thoughts are bent 

On a shadowy something far away. 

Where the river widens to meet the bay — 

A line of black that bends and floats 

On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats. 

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride. 
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride 
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. 
Now he patted his horse's side, 
Now gazed at the landscape far and near. 
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth. 
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth ; 
But mostly he watched with eager search 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 27 

The belfry-tower of the Old North Church, 
As it rose above the graves on the hill, 
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still. 
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height 
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light! 
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns. 
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight 
A second lamp in the belfry burns! 

A hurry of hoofs In a village street, 
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark. 
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark 
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet ; 
That was all ! And yet, through the gloom and the 

light. 
The fate of a nation was riding that night; 
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight, 
Kindled the land into flame with its heat. 

He has left the village and mounted the steep, 
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep, 
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides; 
And under the alders that skirt its edge. 
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge. 
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides. 

It was twelve by the village clock 

When he crossed the bridge into Medford town. 



28 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

He heard the crowing of the cock 
And the barking of the farmer's dog, 
And felt the damp of the river fog 
That rises after the sun goes down. 

It was one by the village clock 

When he galloped into Lexington. 

He saw the gilded weathercock 

Swim in the moonlight as he passed, 

And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, 

Gaze at him with a spectral glare, 

As if they already stood aghast 

At the bloody work they would look upon. 

It was two by the village clock 
When he came to the bridge in Concord town. 
He heard the bleating of the flock 
And the twitter of birds among the trees, 
And felt the breath of the morning breeze 
Blowing over the meadows brown. 
And one was safe and asleep in his bed 
Who at the bridge would be first to fall, 
Who that day would be lying dead. 
Pierced by a British musket-ball. 

You know the rest. In the books you have read, 
How the British Rjegulars fired and fled — 
How the farmers gave them ball for ball 
From behind each fence and farm-yard wall, 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 29 

Chasing the red-coats down the lane, 
Then crossing the fields to emerge again 
Under the trees at the turn of the road, 
And only pausing to fire and load. 

So through the night rode Paul Revere ; 

And so through the night went his cry of alarm 

To every Middlesex village and farm — 

A cry of defiance and not of fear, 

A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door. 

And a word that shall echo f orevermore ! 

For, borne on the night- wind of the Past, 

Through all our history, to the last. 

In the hour of darkness and peril and need, 

The people will waken and listen to hear 

The hurrying hoof -beats of that steed. 

And the midnight message of Paul Revere. 



30 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 



CONCORD HYMN^ 

Sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument, 
April ip, 1836 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), the scholarly lec- 
turer, essayist, and poet, wrote a few poems on national 
themes. The inspiring stanzas of his "Concord Hymn" 
tell of the first serious engagement of the Revolution. Four 
hundred minute-men were guarding the old North Bridge 
at Concord, and there, on April 19, 1775, they began the 
struggle for American liberty. 

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 

Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
And fired the shot heard round the world. 



The foe long since in silence slept; 

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; 
And Time the ruined bridge has swept 

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. 

On this green bank, by this soft stream, 

We set today a votive stone ; 
That memory may their deed redeem 

When, like our sires, our sons are gone. 



^ From The Complete Poetical Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton 
MifSin Company. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 31 

Spirit, that made those heroes dare 
To die, and leave their children free, 

Bid Time and Nature gently spare 
The shaft we raise to them and thee. 



A SONG FOR LEXINGTON 

ROBERT KELLY WEEKS 

Robert Kelly Weeks (1840-1876) spent his brief life in 
New York, Literature and law had almost equal claims 
upon his interest. The poem on Lexington glorifies the 
heroes who won a second decisive victory from the British 
as they were retreating towards Boston after the defeat 
at Concord. Both battles occurred on the same day, 
April 19, 1775. It should not be forgotten that Lexington 
was also the scene of the skirmish fought early that morn- 
ing when Captain John Parker and his forty minute-men 
tried to hinder the British advance towards Concord. 

The spring came earlier on 
Than usual that year ; 
The shadiest snow was gone. 
The slowest brook was clear, 
And warming in the sun 
Shy flowers began to peer. 

'Twas more like middle May, 
The earth so seemed to thrive, 
That Nineteenth April day 
Of Seventeen Seventy-five; 
Winter was well away, 
New England was alive ! 



32 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Alive and sternly glad ! 

Her doubts were with the snow; 

Her courage, long forbade, 

Ran full to overflow ; 

And every hope she had 

Began to bud and grow. 

She rose betimes that morn, 
For there was work to do; 
A planting, not of corn, 
Of what she hardly knew — * 
Blessings for men unborn ; 
And well she did it too ! 

With open hand she stood, 
And sowed for all the years. 
And watered it with blood, 
And watered it with tears — 
The seed of quickening food 
For both the hemispheres. 

This was the planting done 
That April morn of fame; 
Honor to every one 
To that seed-field that came ! 
Honor to Lexington, 
Our first immortal name ! 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 33 
INDEPENDENCE BELL — JULY 4, 1776 

ANONYMOUS 

When the Declaration of Independence was adopted by- 
Congress, the event was announced by ringing the old 
State House bell, which bore the inscription, "Proclaim 
Liberty Throughout the Land, to All the Inhabitants 
Thereof !" The old bellman stationed his little grandson 
at the door of the hall, to await the instructions of the door- 
keeper. At the signal, the young patriot rushed out, and 
clapping his hands, shouted, "Ring, ring, ring !" 

There was tumult in the city, 

In the quaint old Quaker town, 
And the streets were rife with people 

Pacing restless up and down; 
People gathering at the corners, 

Where they whispered each to each, 
And the sweat stood on their temples 

With the earnestness of speech. 

As the bleak Atlantic currents 

Lash the wild Newfoundland shore, 
So they beat against the State House, 

So they surged against the door ; 
And the mingling of their voices 

Made the harmony profound, 
Till the quiet street of Chestnut 

Was all turbulent with sound. 

"Will they do it?" "Dare they do it?" 
"Who is speaking?" "What's the news?" 



34 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

'What of Adams?" ''What of Sherman?" 
"Oh, God grant they won't refuse!" 

"Make some way there!" "Let me nearer!" 
"I am stifling!" "Stifle, then! 

When a nation's life's at hazard. 
We've no time to think of men !" 

So they surged against the State House, 

While all solemnly inside, 
Sat the "Continental Congress," 

Truth and reason for their guide; 
O'er a simple scroll debating. 

Which, though simple it might be, 
Yet should shake the cliffs of England 

With the thunders of the free. 

Far aloft in that high steeple 

Sat the bellman, old and gray; 
He was weary of the tyrant 

And his iron-sceptered sway: 
So he sat, with one hand ready 

On the clapper of the bell. 
When his eye could catch the signal, 

The expected news to tell. 

See ! See ! The dense crowd quivers 

Through all its lengthy line. 
As the boy beside the portal 

Hastens forth to give the sign ! 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 35 

With his httle hands uplifted, 

Breezes dallying with his hair — 
Hark! with deep, clear intonation, 

Breaks his young voice on the air. 

Hushed the people's swelling murmur. 

Whilst the boy cries joyously: 
"Ring !" he shouts, "Ring, grandpapa ! 

Ring! oh, ring for Liberty!" 
Quickly, at the given signal. 

The old bellman lifts his hand; 
Forth he sends the good news, making 

Iron music through the land. 

How they shouted! What rejoicing! 

How the old bell shook the air. 
Till the clang of freedom ruffled 

The calmly gliding Delaware! 
How the bonfires and the torches 

Lighted up the night's repose, 
And from flames, like fabled Phoenix, 

Our glorious liberty arose ! 

That old State House bell is silent. 
Hushed is now its clamorous tongue; 

But the spirit it awakened 
Still is living — ever young: 

And when we greet the smiling sunlight 
On the Fourth of each July, 



36 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

We will ne'er forget the bellman 
Who, betwixt the earth and sky, 

Rang out, loudly, ''Independence!" 
Which, please God, shall never die ! 



NATHAN HALEi 

WILLIAM ORDWAY PARTRIDGE 

William Ordway Partridge (1861-), best known as a 
sculptor, has a reputation also as a writer. The theme of 
the present poem is familiar, but possibly all the details of 
the incident may not be known. After the Continental 
Army had reached Harlem Heights, near New York, 
Washington applied to Colonel Knowlton for some capable 
man to find out the intentions of the enemy. Knowlton 
chose Nathan Hale, a brilliant young captain. This grad- 
uate of Yale College, later a Connecticut school teacher, 
was then in his twenty-first year. In September, 1776, 
Nathan Hale crossed the Sound at Fairfield, reached New 
York, and made a careful study of the enemy's fortifica- 
tions ; but while waiting for the return ferry he was recog- 
nized and betrayed. His arrest followed, and the follow- 
ing day he was hanged without trial. His dying utterance 
was, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my 
country." 

One hero dies — a thousand new ones rise, 

As flowers are sown where perfect blossoms fall ; 

Then quite unknown, the name of Hale now cries 
Wherever duty sounds her silent call. 



1 From Nathan Hale, the Ideal Patriot. Funk & Wagnalls Company. 
Used by permission. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 37 



With head erect he moves and stately pace, 
To meet an awful doom — no ribald jest 

Brings scorn or hate to that exalted face : 
His thoughts are far away, poised and at rest; 

Now on the scaffold see him turn and bid 

Farewell to home and all his heart holds dear. 

Majestic presence ! all man's weakness hid, 

And all his strength in that last hour made clear 

"My sole regret, that it is mine to give 

Only one life, that my dear land may live!" 



THE BATTLE-FIELD 

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

This selection has been counted among Bryant's most 
worthy poems ever since it appeared in the Democratic 
Magazine for October, 1837. Nothing remains to indicate 
precisely what battle ground was in the mind of the poet. 

Once this soft turf, this rivulet's sands. 
Were trampled by a hurrying crowd. 

And fiery hearts and armed hands 
Encountered in the battle-cloud. 

Ah ! never shall the land forget 

How gushed the life-blood of her brave — 
Gushed, warm with hope and courage yet. 

Upon the soil they fought to save. 



38 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Now all is calm, and fresh, and still ; 

Alone the chirp of flitting bird, 
And talk of children on the hill. 

And bell of wandering kine are heard. 

No solemn host goes trailing by 

The black-mouthed gun and staggering wain ; 
Men start not at the battle-cry. 

Oh, be it never heard again ! 

Soon rested those who fought; but thou 
Who minglest in the harder strife 

For truths which men receive not now, 
Thy warfare only ends with life. 

A friendless warfare ! lingering long 
Through weary day and weary year, 

A wild and many-weaponed throng 

Hang on thy front, and flank, and rear. 

Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof, 
And blench not at thy chosen lot. 

The timid good may stand aloof. 

The sage may frown — yet faint thou not. 

Nor heed the shaft too surely cast, 
The foul and hissing bolt of scorn; 

For with thy side shall dwell, at last, 
The victory of endurance born. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 39 

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again; 

The eternal years of God are hers; 
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain, 

And dies among his worshippers. 

Yea, though thou lie upon the dust 
When they who helped thee flee in fear. 

Die full of hope and manly trust, 
Like those who fell in battle here. 

Another hand thy sword shall wield. 

Another hand the standard wave. 
Till from the trumpet's mouth is pealed 

The blast of triumph o'er thy grave. 



From "FAREWELL ADDRESS" 

GEORGE WASHINGTON 

George Washington (1732-1799), first president of the 
United States, ended his public service on September 19, 
1796, with an address that epitomized his hopes for our 
country. With these words he gave his countrymen his 
final interpretation of the name "American," the birthright 
of every citizen of these United States. 

.... Citizens^ by birth or choice, of a common 
country, that country has a right to concentrate 
your affections. The name of American, which 
belongs to you in your national capacity, must 



40 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than 
any appellation derived from local discriminations. 
With slight shades of difference you have the same 
religion, manners, habits, and political principles. 
You have in a common cause fought and triumphed 
together; the independence and liberty you possess 
are the work of joint councils and joint efforts, of 
common dangers, sufferings, and successes 

Observe good faith and justice toward all na- 
tions; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Re- 
ligion and morality enjoin this conduct, and can it 
be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It 
will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no dis- 
tant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the 
magnanimous and too novel example of a people 
always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. 
Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, 
the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any tem- 
porary advantages which might be lost by a steady 
adherence to it ? Can it be that Providence has not 
connected the permanent felicity of a nation with 
its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recom- 
mended by every sentiment which ennobles human 
nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its 
vices? .... 

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to 
foreign nations is, in extending our commercial rela- 
tions, to have with them as little political connec- 
tion as possible. So far as we have already formed 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 41 

engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good 

faith. Here let us stop 

Harmony, and a liberal intercourse with all na- 
tions, are recommended by policy, humanity, and 
interest. But even our commercial policy should 
hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking 
nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; con- 
sulting the natural course of things; diffusing and 
diversifying, by gentle means, the streams of 
commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing, with 
powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable 
course, to define the rights of our merchants, and 
to enable the government to support them, conven- 
tional rules of intercourse, the best that present 
circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but 
temporary, and liable to be, from time to time, aban- 
doned or varied, as experience and circumstances 
shall dictate; constantly keeping in view that it is 
folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors 
from another; that it must pay, with a portion of 
its independence, for whatever it may accept under 
that character; that, by such acceptance, it may 
place itself in the condition of having given equiva- 
lents for nominal favors, and yet being reproached 
with ingratitude for not giving more. There can 
be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon 
real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion 
which experience must cure, which a just pride ought 
to discard. 



42 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

In offering to you, my countrymen, these coun- 
sels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope 
they will make the strong and lasting impression I 
could wish; that they will control the usual current 
of the passions, or prevent our nation from running 
the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of 
nations. But, if I may even flatter myself that they 
may be productive of some partial benefit, some 
occasional good ; that they may now and then recur 
to moderate the fury of party spirit; to warn against 
the mischiefs of foreign intrigue; to guard against 
the impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope 
will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your 
welfare by which they have been dictated. 

Though in reviewing the incidents of my adminis- 
tration I am unconscious of intentional error, I am, 
nevertheless, too sensible of my defects not to think 
it probable that I may have committed many errors. 
Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Al- 
mighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they 
may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that 
my country will never cease to view them with indul- 
gence; and that after forty-five years of my life 
dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the 
faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to 
oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions 
of rest. 

Relying on its kindness in this as in other things, 
and actuated by that fervent love toward it which is 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 43 

so natural to a man who views in it the native soil 
of himself and his progenitors for several genera- 
tions, I anticipate, with pleasing expectations, that 
retreat in which I promise myself to realize, without 
alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst 
of my fellow citizens, the benign influence of good 
laws under a free government, the ever favorite 
object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, 
of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers. 



EUTAW SPRINGS 

PHILIP FRENEAU 

Philip Freneau (1752-1832) has been called "the pioneer 
of our national poets." Throughout the Revolutionary War 
he combined with his work as a newspaper editor the 
writing of many patriotic poems. The battle celebrated in 
the following poem, was fought at Eutaw Springs, in 
South Carolina, and was among the last conflicts of the 
Revolution. It occurred on September 8, 178 1. Though 
pronounced a British victory, the victors fled and were 
pursued for thirty miles by the defeated Americans. Soon 
afterwards South Carolina was freed of enemy troops. 

At Eutaw Springs the valiant died : 
Their limbs with dust are covered o'er ; 

Weep on, ye springs, your tearful tide; 
How many heroes are no more ! 

If in this wreck of ruin they 

Can yet be thought to claim a tear, 



44 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Oh, smite thy gentle breast and say, 
The friends of freedom slumber here! 

Thou who shalt trace this bloody plain, 
If goodness rules thy generous breast. 

Sigh for the wasted rural reign; 
Sigh for the shepherds sunk to rest ! 

Stranger, their humble groves adorn; 

You too may fall, and ask a tear : 
'Tis not the beauty of the morn 

That proves the evening shall be clear. 

They saw their injured country's woe, 
The flaming town, the wasted field ; 

Then rushed to meet the insulting foe ; 
They took the spear — but left the shield. 

Led by thy conquering standards, Greene,^ 
The Britons they compelled to fly : 

None distant viewed the fatal plain, 
None grieved in such a cause to die. 

But, like the Parthians famed of old, 
Who flying, still their arrows threw. 

These routed Britons, full as bold. 
Retreated, and retreating slew. 



1 General Nathaniel Greene, American commander in the South. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 45 

Now rest in peace our patriot band ; 

Though far from nature's limits thrown, 
We trust they find a happier land, 

A brighter Phoebus of their own. 



WASHINGTON 

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

The following stanzas were written to be sung at a 
dinner given by the New York Historical Society on the 
evening of April 30, 1839. The event was in celebration 
of the fiftieth anniversary of Washington's inauguration. 
John Quincy Adams was the chief speaker, and the singing 
of the ode immediately preceded Mr. Adams' address. As 
printed below, the verses are given in Jubilee of the 
Constitution, published by the Society in 1839. 

Great were the hearts and strong the minds 
Of those who framed, in high debate. 

The immortal league of love that binds 
Chir fair broad empire, state with state. 

And ever hallowed be the hour 

When, as the auspicious task was done, 

A nation's gift, the sword of power, 
Was given to glory's unspoiled son. 

That noble race is gone ; the suns 
Of fifty years have risen and set; 



46 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

The holy links those mighty ones 

Had forged and knit, are brighter yet. 

Wide — as our own free race increase — 
Wide shall it stretch the elastic chain, 

And bind in everlasting peace, 
State after state, a mighty train. 



ODE FOR WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY^ 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), poet, novelist, and 
essayist, began publishing poems while still a student at 
Harvard. Much of his verse is in a light vein and reflects 
his genial spirit of humor and good-fellowship. Under 
his kindly exterior, however, burned the fire of an intense 
patriotism. 

Welcome to the day returning, 

Dearer still as ages flow. 
While the torch of Faith is burning, 

Long as Freedom's altars glow ! 
See the hero whom it gave us 

Slumbering on a mother's breast ; 
For the arm he stretched to save us. 

Be its morn forever blest ! 



1 From The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton 
Mifflin Company. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 47 

Hear the tale of youthful glory, 

While of Britain's rescued band 
Friend and foe repeat the story, 

Spread his fame o'er sea and land, 
Where the red cross, proudly streaming. 

Flaps above the frigate's deck. 
Where the golden lilies, gleaming, 

Star the watch-towers of Quebec. 

Look ! The shadow on the dial 

Marks the hour of deadlier strife; 
Days of terror, years of trial. 

Scourge a nation into life. 
Lo, the youth becomes her leader ! 

All her baffled tyrants yield ; 
Through his arm the Lord hath freed her ; 

Crown him on the tented field ! 

Vain is Empire's mad temptation! 

Not for him an earthly crown ! 
He whose sword hath freed a nation 

Strikes the offered sceptre down. 
See the throneless Conqueror seated, 

Ruler by a people's choice; 
See the Patriot's task completed ; 

Hear the Father's dying voice ! 

"By the name that you inherit. 

By the sufferings you recall, '• 



48 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Cherish the fraternal spirit; 

Love your country first of all! 
Listen not to idle questions 

If its bands may be untied; 
Doubt the patriot whose suggestions 

Strive a nation to divide !" 

Father ! We whose ears have tingled 

With the discord notes of shame — 
We, whose sires their blood have mingled 

In the battle's thunder-flame — 
Gathering, while this holy morning 

Lights the land from sea to sea. 
Hear thy counsel, heed thy warning; 

Trust us, while we honor thee ! 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 49 



WASHINGTON^ 

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) had won fame as a 
patriotic poet before writing the passage printed below, 
which is from his long narrative poem, "Under the Old 
Elm," read in Cambridge on July 3, 1875, the hundredth 
anniversary of Washington's taking command of the 
American army. In 1875 Lowell stood, as he does still, 
high above any other American poet of patriotism. His 
services as teacher at Harvard, as an American ambas- 
sador, and as a literary critic are too well known to need 
recounting here. The man and his work were thoroughly 
American. 

Soldier and statesman, rarest unison ; 
High-poised example of great duties done 
Simply as breathing, a world's honors worn 
As life's indifferent gifts to all men born; 
Dumb for himself, unless it were to God, 
But for his barefoot soldiers eloquent, 
Tramping the snow to coral where they trod, 
Held by his awe in hollow-eyed content; 
Modest, yet firm as Nature's self; unblamed 
Save by the men his nobler temper shamed ; 
Never seduced through show of present good 
By other than unsetting lights to steer 
New-trimmed in Heaven, nor than his steadfast 
mood 



^ From The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell. Used 
by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin 



Company 



50 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

More steadfast, far from rashness as from fear; 
Rigid, but with himself first, grasping still 
In swerveless poise the wave-beat helm of will ; 
Not honored then or now because he wooed 
The popular voice, but that he still withstood ; 
Broad-minded, higher-souled, there is but one 
Who was all this and ours, and all men's — Wash- 
ington. 



CROWN OUR WASHINGTON^ 

HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH 

Hezeklah Butterworth (1839-1905) was for thirty- four 
years connected with Tke Youth's Companion. He wrote 
Zig-Zag Journeys and numerous stories for juvenile 
readers, as well as many poems dealing with important 
events in American history. 

Arise — 'Tis the day of our Washington's glory. 

The garlands uplift for our liberties won; 
Forever let Youth tell the patriot's story, 

Whose sword swept for freedom the fields of the 
sun! 

Not with gold, nor with gems, 
But with evergreens vernal. 
And the banners of stars that the continent span, 

Crown, crown we the chief of the heroes eternal. 
Who lifted his sword for the birthright of man! 



1 Used by permission of The Youth's Companion, Boston, Mass. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 51 

He gave us a nation : to make it immortal 

He laid down for freedom the sword that he drew, 
And faith leads us on through the uplifting portal 
Of the glories of peace and our destinies new. 
Not with gold, nor with gems, 
But with evergreens vernal, 
And the flag that the nations of liberty span. 

Crown, crown him the chief of the heroes eternal. 
Who laid down his sword for the birthright of man ! 

Lead, Face of the Future, serene in thy beauty, 

Till o'er the dead heroes the peace star shall gleam, 
Till Right shall be Might in the counsels of duty, 
And the service of man be life's glory supreme. 
Not with gold, nor with gems. 
But with evergreens vernal, 
And the flags that the nations in brotherhood span. 
Crown, crown we the chief of the heroes eternal, 
Whose honor was gained by his service to man ! 



52 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 
WHAT IS PATRIOTISM? 

FISHER AMES 

Fisher Ames (1758-1808) was known as one of the 
greatest Revolutionary orators. The speech from which 
this selection is taken outranks in eloquence every other 
before the day of Daniel Webster; it is also historically 
significant, for it kept America from a war with England 
in 1796 over the rights of American trade and navigation, 
at a time when such a war would have been disastrous. 
When Ames spoke on April 28, 1796, before the House of 
Representatives, his oratory brought tears to the eyes of all 
hearers, and even his political opponents became enthusi- 
astic in their praises. 

.... What is patriotism ? Is it a narrow affec- 
tion for the spot where a man was born? Are the 
very clods where we tread entitled to this ardent 
preference because they are greener? No, sir; that 
is not the character of the virtue, and it soars higher 
for its object. It is an extended self-love, mingling 
with all the enjoyments of life, and twisting itself 
with the minutest filaments of the heart. It is thus 
we obey the laws of society, because they are the 
laws of virtue. In their authority we see, not the 
array of force and terror, but the venerable image of 
our country's honor. Every good citizen makes that 
honor his own, and cherishes it not only as precious, 
but as sacred. He is willing to risk his life in its 
defense, and is conscious that he gains protection 
while he gives it. For what rights of a citizen will be 
deemed inviolable when a state renounces the prin- 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 53 

ciples that constitute their security? Or if his life 
should not be invaded, what would its enjoyments 
be in a country odious in the eyes of strangers and 
dishonored in his own ? Could he look with affection 
and veneration to such a country as his parent ? The 
sense of having one would die within him; he would 
blush for his patriotism, if he retained any, and 
justly, for it would be a vice. He would be a ban- 
ished man in his native land. 

I see no exception to the respect that is paid 
among nations to the law of good faith. If there 
are cases in this enlightened period when it is vio- 
lated, there are none when it is decried. It is the 
philosophy of politics, the religion of governments. 
It is observed by barbarians — a whiff of tobacco 
smoke or a string of beads gives not merely binding 
force, but sanctity, to treaties. Even in Algiers, a 
truce may be bought for money; but when ratified, 
even Algiers is too wise, or too just, to disown and 
annul its obligation. Thus we see, neither the igno- 
rance of savages, nor the principles of an association 
for piracy and rapine, permit a nation to despise its 
engagements. If, sir, there could be a resurrection 
from the foot of the gallows, if the victims of justice 
could live again, collect together, and form a society, 
they would, however loath, soon find themselves 
obliged to make justice, that justice under which 
they fell, the fundamental law of their state. They 
would perceive it was their interest to make others 



54 Ainerican Patriotic Prose and Verse 

respect, and they would, therefore, soon pay some 
respect themselves to the obligations of good faith. 



HAIL, COLUMBIA 

JOSEPH HOPKINSON 

Joseph Hopkinson (1770-1842) was a distinguished law- 
yer and statesman. His one well-known contribution to 
American literature is this patriotic poem, written when 
feeling in America ran high against France on account of 
her unjust treatment of our envoys. This was the cul- 
mination of a long controversy caused by France's insist- 
ence that the old treaty bound us to take part in her 
European difficulties. Washington and then Adams deter- 
minedly refused. On May 28, 1798, Congress authorized a 
provisional army of 10,000 men and gave power to the 
President to instruct the commanders of American ships to 
seize French armed vessels attacking American merchant- 
men. Fortunately, war was needless. Hopkinson's song 
was first sung at the benefit performance for a popular 
actor in the Chestnut Street Theater, Philadelphia, in 
May, 1798. 

Hail, Columbia ! happy land ! 
Hail, ye heroes ! heaven-born band ! 

Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause, 

Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause. 
And when the storm of war was gone, 
Enjoyed the peace your valor won. 

Let independence be our boast, 

Ever mindful what it cost; 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 55 

Ever grateful for the prize. 
Let its altar reach the skies. 

Firm, united, let us be, 
Rallying round our Liberty; 
As a band of brothers joined, 
Peace and safety we shall find. 

Immortal patriots ! rise once more : 
Defend your rights, defend your shore : 
Let no rude foe, with impious hand. 
Let no rude foe, with impious hand, 
Invade the shrine where sacred lies 
Of toil and blood the well-earned prize. 
While offering peace sincere and just, 
In Heaven we place a manly trust 
That truth and justice will prevail, 
And every scheme of bondage fail. 

Firm, united, etc. 

Sound, sound, the trump of Fame ! 
Let Washington's great name 

Ring through the world with loud applause. 

Ring through the world with loud applause ; 
Let every clime to Freedom dear. 
Listen with a joyful ear. 

With equal skill, and godlike power, 

He governed in the fearful hour 



56 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Of horrid war; or guides, with ease, 
The happier times of honest peace. 

Firm, united, etc. 

Behold the chief who now commands, 
Once more to serve his country, stands — 
The rock on which the storm will beat, 
The rock on which the storm will beat ; 
But, armed in virtue firm and true. 
His hopes are fixed on Heaven and you. 
When hope was sinking in dismay. 
And glooms obscured Columbia's day. 
His steady mind, from changes free, 
Resolved on death or liberty. 

Firm, united, let us be. 
Rallying round our Liberty; 
As a band of brothers joined. 
Peace and safety we shall find. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 57 
From "FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS" 

THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), author of the Declara- 
tion of Independence, and the great apostle of democratic 
simplicity, became the third president of the United States 
on March 4, 1801. At a time when popular government 
was something of an experiment he showed by word and 
action his belief in the right of the people to govern them- 
selves, and his firm conviction was, as he so well expresses 
it here, that the United States is the ''world's best hope." 

Let us then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart 
and one mind; let us restore to social intercourse 
that harmony and affection without which liberty, 
and even life itself, are but dreary things. And let 
us reflect that, having banished from our land that 
religious intolerance under which mankind so long 
bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we 
countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as 
wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecu- 
tions. During the throes and convulsions of the 
ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of in- 
furiated man, seeking through blood and slaughter 
his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the 
agitation of the billows should reach even this dis- 
tant and peaceful shore ;^ that this should be more 
feared and felt by some and less by others, and 
should divide opinions as to measures of safety. 



"^ Jefferson referred to the French Revolution. 



58 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

But every difference of opinion is not a difference 
of principle. 

We have called by different names brethren of 
the same principle. We are all Republicans : v^e are 
all Federalists. If there be any among us who v^ould 
wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its repub- 
lican form, let them stand undisturbed as monu- 
ments of the safety with which error of opinion may 
be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. 
I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a 
republican government cannot be strong; that this 
government is not strong enough. But would the 
honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experi- 
ment, abandon a government which has so far kept 
us free and firm, on the theoretic and visionary fear 
that this government, the world's best hope, may by 
possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust 
not. I believe this on the contrary the strongest 
government on earth. I believe it the only one where 
every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the 
standard of the law, and would meet invasions of 
the public order as his own personal concern. Some- 
times it is said that man cannot be trusted with the 
government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted 
with the government of others ? Or have we found 
angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let 
history answer this question. 

Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue 
our own federal and republican principles, our at- 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 59 

tachment to union and representative government. 
Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from 
the exterminating havoc of one-quarter of the globe ; 
too high-minded to endure the degradations of the 
others; possessing a chosen country, with room 
enough for our descendants to the hundredth and 
thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of 
our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to 
the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and 
confidence from our fellow citizens, resulting not 
from birth, but from our actions and their sense of 
them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, 
indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of 
them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, grati- 
tude, and the love of man; acknowledging and 
adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its 
dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness 
of man here and his greater happiness hereafter — 
with all these blessings, what more is necessary to 
make us a happy and a prosperous people? 



60 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 
THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER 

FRANCIS SCOTT KEY 

Francis Scott Key (1780-1843) was held a prisoner 
aboard a small ship, by marines of the British fleet, during 
the bombardment of Fort McHenry, September 13, 1814. 
This occurred shortly before the close of the War of 1812. 
After a night of intense anxiety over the outcome of the 
engagement, Key's suspense was relieved in the gray dawn 
by the sight of the Stars and Stripes floating over the fort. 
The joy he felt in descrying the flag still flying above the 
ramparts, led him to v\Tite the first draft of ''The Star- 
Spangled Banner," which he scribbled on the back of an 
old letter. Key gave the poem the same day to Judge 
Nicholson, who had it printed in the office of the Baltimore 
American, and that night it was sung at the Holiday Street 
Theater to the tune of "Anacreon in Heaven." Soon after, 
it reached New Orleans, where it was played by a United 
States military band. Key's body lies in Mount Olivet 
Cemetery, Frederick, Md., and a large national flag is kept 
floating over his grave. 

Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, 
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last 

gleaming ? 
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the 

perilous fight. 
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly 

streaming ! 
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air. 
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still 

there ; 
Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave 
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave ? 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 61 

On that shore dimly seen through the mists of the 

deep, 
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence 

reposes, 
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering 

steep. 
As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses ? 
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first 

beam, 
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream ; 
'Tis the star-spangled banner ; oh, long may it wave 
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave ! 

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore 

That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion 
A home and a country should leave us no more ? 
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' 
pollution. 
No refuge could save the hireling and slave 
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave ; 
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave 
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave. 

Oh, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand 
Between their loved homes and the war's desola- 
tion! 

Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heaven-rescued 
land 



62 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserved us 
a nation. 
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, 
And this be our motto — ''In God is our trust": 
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave 
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave. 



AMERICAN GOVERNMENT UNIQUE 

DANIEL WEBSTER 

Daniel Webster (1782-1852), orator and statesman, de- 
livered the address from which this selection is taken, in 
Fryeburg, Maine, July 4, 1802. when he was principal of 
the Fryeburg Academy and but twenty years of age. It 
remained unpublished until eighty years after its delivery, 
when the original manuscript was found, with a mass of 
private papers, in a junk shop in Boston. In 1882, the 
centennial year of Webster's birth, it was issued in pam- 
phlet form. 

.... The true definition of despotism is govern- 
ment without law. It may exist, therefore, in the 
hands of many as well as of one. Rebellions are 
despotisms ; factions are despotisms ; loose democ- 
racies are despotisms. These are a thousand times 
more dreadful than the concentration of all power 
in the hands of a single tyrant. The despotism of 
one man is like the thunderbolt, which falls here and 
there, scorching and consuming the individual on 
whom it lights; but popular commotion, the des- 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 63 

potism of a mob, is an earthquake, which in one 
moment swallows up everything. It is the excel- 
lence of our government that it is placed in a proper 
medium between these two extremes, that it is 
equally distant from mobs and from thrones. 

.... Unhappy Europe! the judgment of God 
rests hard upon thee ! Thy sufferings would deserve 
an angel's pity if an angel's tears could wash away 
thy crimes ! The Eastern Continent seems trembling 
on the brink of some great catastrophe. Convulsions 
shake and terrors alarm it. Ancient systems are 
falling; works reared by ages are crumbling into 
atoms. Let us humbly implore Heaven that the 
wide-spreading desolation may never reach the 
shores of our native land, but let us devoutly make 
up our minds to do our duty in events that may 
happen to us. Let us cherish genuine patriotism. 
In that, there is a sort of inspiration that gives 
strength and energy almost more than human. When 
the mind is attached to a great object, it grows to 
the magnitude of its undertaking. A true patriot, 
with his eye and his heart on the honor and happi- 
ness of his country, hath an elevation of soul that 
lifts him above the rank of ordinary men. To com- 
mon occurrences he is indifferent. Personal consid- 
erations dwindle into nothing in comparison with 
his high sense of public duty. In all the vicissitudes 
of fortune, he leans with pleasure on the protection 
of Providence and on the dignity and composure of 



64 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

his own mind. While his country enjoys peace, he 
rejoices and is thankful; and, if it be in the counsel 
of Heaven to send the storm and the tempest, his 
bosom proudly swells against the rage that assaults 
it. Above fear, above danger, he feels that the last 
end which can happen to any man never comes too 
soon if he falls in defense of the laws and liberties 
of his country. 



LIBERTY AND UNION INSEPARABLE 

DANIEL WEBSTER 

This selection is taken from a speech delivered before 
the United States Senate on January 26, 1830. Webster 
was at that time in the prime of life. His black hair, high 
forehead, and shaggy brows gave him an appearance which 
was always impressive, and never more so than on this day 
when he held his audience spellbound by his eloquence. 
The speech is often called "Webster's Reply to Hayne," 
because it was prompted by Hayne's speech for broader 
state rights. Webster's famous plea for an unbroken union 
of states represents one of the high-water marks of 
American oratory. 

.... I PROFESS^ sir, in my career hitherto, to have 
kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the 
whole country, and the preservation of our federal 
Union. It is to that Union that we owe our safety at 
home and our consideration and dignity abroad. It 
is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for 
whatever makes us most proud of our country. That 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 65 

Union we reached only by the discipline of our vir- 
tues in the severe school of adversity. 

It had its origin in the necessity of disordered 
finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. 
Under its benign influence these great interests im- 
mediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth 
with newness of life. Every year of its duration 
has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its 
blessings ; and, although our territory has stretched 
out wider and wider, and our population spread far- 
ther and farther, they have not outrun its protection 
or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious foun- 
tain of national, social, personal, happiness. 

I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the 
Union to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess 
behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of 
preserving liberty when the bonds that unite us 
together shall be broken asunder. I have not accus- 
tomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion 
to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom 
the depths of the abyss below; nor could I regard 
him as a safe counselor in the affairs of this govern- 
ment, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on con- 
sidering, not how the Union might be preserved, 
but how tolerable might be the condition of the 
people when it shall be broken up and destroyed. 

While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, 
gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us 
gnd our children. Beyond that I seek not to pene- 



66 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

trate the veil. God grant that, in my day at least, 
that curtain may not rise! God grant that on my 
vision never may be opened what lies beyond! 
When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the 
last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him 
shining on the broken and dishonored fragments 
of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, 
discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil 
feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood. 

Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather 
behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now 
known and honored throughout the earth, still full 
high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in 
their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, 
nor a single star obscured — bearing for its motto 
no such miserable interrogatory as "What is all this 
worth?" nor those other words of delusion and 
folly, "Liberty first, and union afterwards" — but 
everywhere, spread all over in characters of living 
light, blazing on its ample folds, as they float over 
the sea and over the land, and in every wind under 
the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to 
every American heart — Liberty and Union, now 
and forever, one and inseparable I 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 67 
OLD IRONSIDES 1 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

This splendid lyric celebrates the American frigate Con- 
stitution. Launched in 1797, the famoi^s sea-fighter served 
against the Mediterranean pirates, and then against Eng- 
land in the war of 1812. One of her daring exploits during 
the latter struggle was the capture of the English frigate 
Guerriere. In 1830 Holmes read a newspaper story to the 
effect that the Navy Department had condemned the old 
Constitution to be destroyed because unseaworthy. Though 
still a student and barely twenty-one, Holmes wrote these 
lines that were to stir the feeling of the entire nation. The 
poem was spread broadcast, and caused such popular indig- 
nation that the order of destruction was recalled. The old 
Constitution was almost completely rebuilt in 1834, and 
since 1897 she has been moored in the Charlestown (Mass.) 
Navy Yard, perhaps the most highly prized of all our 
inheritances from the past. 

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down ! 

Long has it waved on high, 
And many an eye has danced to see 

That banner in the sky; 
Beneath it rung the battle shout, 

And burst the cannon's roar — 
The meteor of the ocean air 

Shall sweep the clouds no more. 

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood. 
Where knelt the vanquished foe. 



1 From The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton 
Mifflin Company. 



68 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, 
And waves were white below, 

No more shall feel the victor's tread, 
Or know the conquered knee — 

The harpies of the shore shall pluck 
The eagle of the sea! 

Oh, better that her shattered hulk 

Should sink beneath the wave; 
Her thunders shook the mighty deep, 

And there should be her grave; 
Nail to the mast her holy flag, 

Set every threadbare sail. 
And give her to the god of storms. 

The lightning and the gale ! 



LIBERTY FOR ALL 

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) founded the Ameri- 
can Anti-Slavery Society, and served as its president from 
1843 to 1865. He was for years the leading abolitionist in 
the country. Twice he was imprisoned for the violent 
utterances with which he denounced slaveholders. He 
established the renowned anti-slavery paper, the Liberator, 
and wrote many poems in which he demanded the uncon- 
ditional emancipation of all slaves. 

They tell me. Liberty ! that in thy name 
I may not plead for all the human race ; 
That some are born to bondage and disgrace, 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 69 

Some to a heritage of woe and shame, 
And some to power supreme, and glorious fame : 
With my whole soul I spurn the doctrine base, 
And, as an equal brotherhood, embrace 
All people, and for all fair freedom claim ! 
Know this, O man! whate'er thy earthly fate — 
God never made a tyrant nor a slave : 
Woe, then, to those who dare to desecrate 
His glorious image ! — for to all He gave 
Eternal rights, which none may violate ; 
And, by a mighty hand, the oppressed He yet shall 
save! 



STANZAS ON FREEDOM ^ 

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Lowell made great personal sacrifices in espousing the 
cause of abolition as early as 1843, when the issue was a 
very unpopular one. These stanzas, written for an anti- 
slavery celebration held on the anniversary of West Indian 
emancipation, aroused much hard feeling, and when his 
second book of verse was to be published, Lowell was asked 
if he did not wish the poem suppressed. His answer was, 
"Let all others be suppressed if you will — that I will never 
suppress." 

Men ! whose boast it is that ye 
Come of fathers brave and free, 
If there breathe on earth a slave. 



1 From The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell. Used 
by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin 
Company. 



70 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Are ye truly free and brave? 
If ye do not feel the chain, 
When it works a brother's pain, 
Are ye not base slaves indeed, 
Slaves unworthy to be freed? 

Women ! who shall one day bear 
Sons to breathe New England air, 
If ye hear, without a blush, 
Deeds to make the roused blood rush 
Like red lava through your veins, 
For your sisters now in chains — 
Answer ! are ye fit to be 
Mothers of the brave and free? 

Is true Freedom but to break 
Fetters for our own dear sake, 
And, with leathern hearts, forget 
That we owe mankind a debt? 
No ! true freedom is to share 
All the chains our brothers wear, 
And, with heart and hand, to be 
Earnest to make others free. 

They are slaves who fear to speak 
For the fallen and the weak ; 
They are slaves who will not choose 
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, 
Rather than in silence shrink 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 71 

From the truth they needs must think ; 
They are slaves who dare not be 
In the right with two or three. 



THE PRESENT CRISIS^ 

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

This poem was written in 1844, when the annexation of 
Texas was a topic of general discussion. 

When a deed is done for Freedom, through the 

broad earth's aching breast 
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from 

east to west. 
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul 

within him climb 
To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy 

sublime 
Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny 

stem of Time. 

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the 

instantaneous throe. 
When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems 

to and fro; 



1 From The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell. Used 
by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin 
Company. 



72 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing 

start, 
Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute 

lips apart. 
And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps 

beneath the Future's heart. 

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a 

chill. 
Under continent to continent, the sense of coming 

ill, 

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sym- 
pathies with God 

In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up 
by the sod, 

Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the 
nobler clod. 

For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears 

along. 
Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of 

right or wrong; 
Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's 

vast frame 
Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of 

joy or shame — 
In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal 

claim. 



( 

American Patriotic Prose and Verse 73 

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to 

decide, 
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good 

or evil side; 
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each 

the bloom or blight. 
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep 

upon the right. -^ 
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness 

and that light. 

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou 

shalt stand. 
Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust 

against our land? 
Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth 

alone is strong, 
And, albeit she wanders outcast now, I see around 

her throng 
Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from 

all wrong. 

Backward look across the ages and the beacon- 
moments see, 

That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through 
Oblivion's sea; 

Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding 
cry 



1 Matthew, xxv, 32-34. 



74 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose 
feet earth's chaff must fly; 

Never shows the choice momentous till the judg- 
ment hath passed by. 

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages 
but record 

One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old sys- 
tems and the Word; 

Truth forever on the scaffold. Wrong forever on 
the throne — 

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the 
dim unknown, 

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch 
above his own. 

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what 

is great, 
Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron 

helm of fate, 
But the soul is still oracular ; amid the market's din, 
List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic 

cave within — 
"They enslave their children's children who make 

compromise with sin." 

Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant 
brood. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 75 

Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have 

drenched the earth with blood, 
Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our 

purer day, 
Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable 

prey — 
Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless 

children play ? 

Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her 
wretched crust, 

Ere her cause bring fame and profit and 'tis pros- 
perous to be just; 

Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward 
stands aside. 

Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified. 

And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had 
denied. 

Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes — they were 
souls that stood alone. 

While the men they agonized for hurled the con- 
tumelious stone. 

Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden 
beam incline 

To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their 
faith divine. 

By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's 
supreme design. 



76 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding 
feet I track, 

Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that 
turns not back, 

And these mounts of anguish number how each 
generation learned 

One new word of that great Credo which in prophet- 
hearts hath burned 

Since the first man stood God-conquered with his 
face to heaven upturned. 

For Humanity sweeps onward: where today the 

martyr stands, 
On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in 

his hands; 
Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling 

fagots burn. 
While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe 

return 
To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden 

urn. 

'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves 
Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' 

graves, 
^Worshippers of light ancestral make the present 

light a crime — 
Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered 

by men behind their time? 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 11 

Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make 
Plymouth Rock sublime? 

They were men of present valor, stalwart old icono- 
clasts, 

Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the 
Past's ; 

But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that 
hath made us free, 

Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender 
spirits flee 

The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove 
them across the sea. 

They have rights who dare maintain them; we are 

traitors to our sires, 
Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit 

altar-fires ; 
Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in 

our haste to slay, 
From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral 

lamps away 
To light up the martyr- fagots round the prophets 

of today? 

New occasions teach new duties ; Time makes ancient 

good uncouth ; 
They must upward still, and onward, who would 

keep abreast of Truth; 



78 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves 

must Pilgrims be, 
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the 

desperate winter sea. 
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's 

blood-rusted key. 



BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC 

JULIA WARD HOWE 

While in Washington in 1861, the author visited an army 
camp near the city. There she saw the soldiers marching 
to the tune of "John Brown's Body." At once she made up 
her mind to write a marching song to fit that music, and 
her "Battle Hymn of the RepubHc," which was the result 
of this determination, was soon beirg sung throughout the 
entire North. 

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the 

Lord : 
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of 

wrath are stored ; 
Tie hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible 

swift sword : 

His truth is marching on. 

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred 

circling camps ; 
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews 

and damps; 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 79 

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and 
flaring lamps. 

His day is marching on. 

I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of 

steel : 
*'As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my 

grace shall deal; 
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with 

his heel. 

Since God is marching on." 

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never 
call retreat; 

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judg- 
ment-seat : 

Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, 
my feet ! 

Our God is marching on. 

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the 

sea. 
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you 

and me: 
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make 

men free. 

While God is marching on. 



80 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 
UNION AND LIBERTY^ 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

The following poem was inspired by the events of the 
Civil War, and is the finest patriotic utterance of Holmes. 
A spirit of reverent devotion to God and country lives in 
every rhythmical stanza. 

Flag of the heroes who left us their glory, 

Borne through their battlefields' thunder and 
fliame. 
Blazoned in song and illumined in story, 
Wave o'er us all who inherit their fame ! 
Up with our banner bright, 
Sprinkled with starry light, 
Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore, 
While through the sounding sky 
Loud rings the Nation's cry — 
Union and Liberty ! One evermore ! 

Light of our firmament, guide of our Nation, 
Pride of her children, and honored afar. 

Let the wide beams of thy full constellation 
Scatter each cloud that would darken a star ! 
Up with our banner bright, etc. 

Empire unsceptred ! what foe shall assail thee, 
Bearing the standard of Liberty's van? 



1 From The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton 
Mifflin Company. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 81 

Think not the God of thy fathers shall fail thee, 
Striving with men for the birthright of man ! 
Up with our banner bright, etc. 

Yet if, by madness and treachery blighted. 

Dawns the dark hour when the sword thou must 
draw. 
Then with the arms of thy millions united, 
Smite the bold traitors to Freedom and Law ! 
Up with our banner bright, etc. 

Lord of the Universe! shield us and guide us. 

Trusting Thee always, through shadow and sun ! 
Thou hast united us, who shall divide us ? 
Keep us, oh, keep us the Many in One! 

Up with our banner bright, 

Sprinkled with starry light, 
Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore. 

While through the sounding sky 

Loud rings the Nation's cry, — 
Union and Liberty ! One evermore ! 



82 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

PROCLAIM LIBERTY THROUGHOUT THE 

LAND 

WENDELL PHILLIPS 

Wendell Phillips (1811-1884) was an ardent supporter 
of the Abolition cause, and in 1865 succeeded William 
Lloyd Garrison as president of the Anti-Slavery Society. 
This selection is from his aHdress, "Under the Flag," 
delivered in Boston in 1861, after the capture of Fort 
Sumter had furnished sure proof of the determination of 
the North to take up arms. 

.... I REJOICE before God today for every word 
that I have spoken counseling peace; but I rejoice 
also with an especially profound gratitude that now, 
the first time in my anti-slavery life, I speak under 
the Stars and Stripes, and welcome the tread of 
Massachusetts men marshaled for war. No matter 
what the past has been or said ; today the slave asks 
God for a sight of this banner, and counts it the 
pledge of his redemption. Hitherto it may have 
meant what you thought, or v/hat I did; today it 
represents sovereignty and justice. The only mis- 
tal<:e that I have made was in supposing IMassachu- 
setts wholly choked with cotton dust and cankered 
with gold. The South thought her patient and 
generous willingness for peace was cowardice ; today 
shows the mistake. She has been sleeping on her 
arms since 1783,^ and the first cannon shot brings 



1 The last British troops were withdrawn from the United States 
in that year. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 83 

her to her feet with the war cry of the Revolution 
on her lips. Any man who loves either liberty or 
manhood must rejoice at such an hour. 

Let me tell you the path by which I at least have 
trod my way up to this conclusion. I do not 
acknowledge the motto, in its full, broad significance, 
''Our country, right or wrong."^ If you let it tres- 
pass on the domain of morals, it is knavish. But 
there is a full, broad sphere for loyalty ; and no war 
cry ever stirred a generous people that had not in 
it much of truth and right. It is sublime, this rally 
of a great people to the defense of what they think 
their national honor ! A ''noble and puissant nation 
rousing herself like a strong man from sleep, and 
shaking her invincible locks." Just now, we saw her 
"reposing, peaceful, and motionless; but at the call 
of patriotism she ruffles, as it were, her swelling 
plumage, collects her scattered elements of strength, 
and awakens her dormant thunders."^ 

.... The government has waited until its best 
friends almost suspected its courage and its integ- 
rity; but the cannon shot against Fort Sumter has 
opened the only door out of this hour. There were 
but two. One was compromise ; the other was battle. 
The integrity of the North closed the first; the gen- 
erous forbearance of nineteen States closed the 



^ A quotation from the speech of Stephen Decatur, the naval cap- 
tain, at a banquet in Norfolk in April, 1816. 

^ From Milton's "Areopagitica," a plea for freedom of the press 
addressed to the English Parliament in 1644. 



84 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

other. The South opened this with cannon shot, 
and Lincoln shows himself at the door. 

The war, then, is not aggressive, but in self- 
defense, and Washington has become the Ther- 
mopylae ^ of Liberty and Justice. Rather than sur- 
render that capital, cover every square foot of it 
with a living body; crowd it with a million of men, 
and empty every bank vault in the North to pay the 
cost. Teach the world once for all, that North 
America belongs to the Stars and Stripes and under 
them no man shall wear a chain. In the whole of 
this conflict I have looked only at liberty — only at 
the slave. Perry ^ entered the Battle of the Lakes 
with *'Don't give up the ship !" floating from the 
masthead of the Lawrence. When with his fighting 
flag he left her crippled, heading north, and, mount- 
ing the deck of the Niagara, turned her bows due 
west, he did all for one and the same purpose — to 
rake the decks of the foe. Steer north or west, 
acknowledge secession or cannonade it. I care not 
which; but ''Proclaim liberty throughout all the land 
unto all the inhabitants thereof." ^ 

.... The result is as sure as the throne of God. 



* In 480 B. C. Leonidas and his valiant band vainly withstood the 
advance of the Persian army through the pass of Thermopylae. 

2 On September 10, 1813, Oliver Hazard Perry defeated the English 
fleet in the famous naval Battle of Lake Erie. The victory gave com- 
mand of the Lakes to the American fleet. 

^ These words are inscribed upon the rim of the Liberty Bell, which 
rang out news of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on 
July 4, 1776. It is still kept in the old State House at Philadelphia. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 85 



I believe in the possibility of justice, in the certainty 
of union. Years hence, when the smoke of this 
conflict clears away, the world will see under our 
banner all tongues, all creeds, all races — one 
brotherhood; and on the banks of the Potomac, the 
Genius of Liberty, robed in light, four and thirty 
stars for her diadem, broken chains under her feet, 
and an olive branch in her right hand. 



BOSTON HYMN^ 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

Read in Music Hall, Boston, January i, 1863, ^^^ ^^7 
when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. 

The word of the Lord by night 
To the watching Pilgrims came. 
As they sat by the seaside. 
And filled their hearts with flame. 

God said, I am tired of kings, 
I suffer them no more; 
Up to my ear the morning brings 
The outrage of the poor. 



Think ye I made this ball 
A field of havoc and war, 



1 From The Complete Poetical Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Used 
by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin 
Company. 



86 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Where tyrants great and tyrants small 
Might harry the weak and poor? 

My angel — his name is Freedom — 
Choose him to be your king; 
He shall cut pathways east and west, 
And fend you with his wing. 

Lo ! I uncover the land 
Which I hid of old time in the West, 
As the sculptor uncovers the statue 
When he has wrought his best; 

I show Columbia, of the rocks 
Which dip their foot in the seas, 
And soar to the air-borne flocks 
Of clouds and the boreal fleece. 

I will divide my goods; 
Call in the wretch and slave : 
None shall rule but the humble, 
And none but Toil shall have. 

I will have never a noble, 
No lineage counted great; 
Fishers and choppers and ploughmen 
Shall constitute a state. 

Go, cut down trees in the forest, 
And trim the straightest boughs ; 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 87 

Cut down trees in the forest, 
And build me a wooden house. 

Call the people together, 
The young men and the sires. 
The digger in the harvest field, 
HireHng and him that hires; 

And here in a pine state-house 
They shall choose men to rule 
In every needful faculty. 
In church and state and school. 

Lo, now! if these poor men 
Can govern the land and sea, 
And make just laws below the sun, 
As planets faithful be. 

And ye shall succor men; 

'Tis nobleness to serve ; 

Help them who cannot help again : 

Beware from right to swerve. 

I break your bonds and masterships, 
And I unchain the slave : 
Free be his heart and hand henceforth 
As wind and wandering wave. 

I cause from every creature 
His proper good to flow : 



88 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

As much as he is and doeth, 
So much he shall bestow. 

But, laying hands on another 
To coin his labor and sweat, 
He goes in pawn to his victim 
For eternal years in debt. 

Today unbind the captive. 
So only are ye unbound; 
Lift up a people from the dust, 
Trump of their rescue, sound ! 

Pay ransom to the owner. 

And fill the bag to the brim. 

Who is the owner ? The slave is ov^^ner, 

And ever was. Pay him. 

O North ! give him beauty for rags. 
And honor, O South ! for his shame ; 
Nevada! coin thy golden crags 
With Freedom's image and name. 

Up! and the dusky race 
That sat in darkness long — 
Be swift their feet as antelopes, 
And as behemoth strong. 

Come, East and West and North, 
By races, as snow-flakes, 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 89 

And carry my purpose forth, 
Which neither halts nor shakes. 

My will fulfilled shall be, 
For, in daylight or in dark, 
My thunderbolt has eyes to see 
His way home to the mark. 



SHERMAN 1 

RICHARD WATSON GILDER 

Richard Watson Gilder (1844-1909) was among the 
finest literary workmen of the past generation. His un- 
usual lyrical power and an excellent choice of dignified 
poetic themes made possible a finely wrought body of verse, 
much of it highly patriotic in spirit. For twenty-eight 
years he served as editor of the Century Magazine. 

Glory and honor and fame and everlasting laudation 
For our captains who loved not war, but fought for 

the life of the nation; 
[Who knew that, in all the land, one slave meant 

strife, not peace; 
Who fought for freedom, not glory ; made war, that 

war might cease. 



1 From The Complete Poetical Works of Richard Watson Gilder, 
Used by permission of Rodman Gilder and by special arrangement with 
Houghton Mifflin Company. 



90 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Glory and honor and fame; the beating of muffled 

drums ; 
The wailing funeral dirge, as the flag-wrapt coffin 

comes ; 
Fame and honor and glory, and joy for a noble soul ; 
For a full and splendid life, and laureled rest at the 

goal. 

Glory and honor and fame ; the pomp that a soldier 

prizes ; 
The league-long waving line as the marching falls 

and rises; 
Rumbling of caissons and guns; the clatter of 

horses' feet, 
And a million awe-struck faces far down the waiting 

street. 

But better than martial woe, and the pageant of civic 

sorrow ; 
Better than praise of today, or the statue w^e build 

tomorrow ; 
Better than honor or glory, and History's iron pen, 
Was the thought of duty done and the love of his 

fellow-men. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 91 
THE SWORD OF ROBERT LEE^ 

ABRAM JOSEPH RYAN 

Abram Joseph Ryan (1839-1886), or Father Ryan, as he 
is now generally termed, was a Virginian. He served as a 
chaplain in the Confederate Army and in his writings 
presents the side of the South. In this poem he does honor 
to the man who stands first among Southerners brought 
into prominence by the Civil War. 

Forth from its scabbard, pure and bright. 

Flashed the sword of Lee! 
Far in front of the deadly fight, 
High o'er the brave in the cause of Right, 
Its stainless sheen, like a beacon light. 

Led us to Victory! 

Out of its scabbard, where, full long, 

It slumbered peacefully. 
Roused from its rest by the battle's song. 
Shielding the feeble, smiting the strong. 
Guarding the right, avenging the wrong. 

Gleamed the sword of Lee. 

Forth from its scabbard, high in air, 

Beneath Virginia's sky; 
And they who saw it gleaming there. 
And knew who bore it, knelt to swear 
That where the sword led they would dare 

To follow and to die. 



1 From Father Ryan's Poems. P. J. Kenedy & Sons. Used by per- 
mission. 



02 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Out of its scabbard! never hand 

Waved sword from stain as free, 
Nor purer sword led braver band, 
Nor braver bled for a brighter land, 
Nor brighter land had a cause so grand, 
Nor cause a chief like Lee! 

Forth from its scabbard ! How we prayed 

That sword might victor be; 
And when our triumph was delayed, 
And many a hea.rt grew sore afraid, 
We still hoped on while gleamed the blade 
Of noble Robert Lee. 

Forth from its scabbard all in vain 
Bright flashed the sword of Lee; 

'Tis shrouded now in its sheath again. 

It sleeps the sleep of our noble slain, 

Defeated, yet without a stain. 
Proudly and peacefully. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 93 



ROBERT E. LEEi 

JULIA WARD HOWE 

In this poem, read at the Richmond celebration of the 
one-hundredth anniversary of General Lee's birth, Mrs. 
Howe expressed the admiration of a reunited nation for 
one of her greatest sons. When General Lee surrendered 
at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, he was shown the highest 
respect, and at his death in 1870 the press North and South 
paid fitting tribute to the character of this Virginia 
gentleman. 

A GALLANT foeman in the fight, 
A brother when the fight was o'er, 

The hand that led the host with might 
The blessed torch of learning bore. 

No shriek of shells nor roll of drums, 
No challenge fierce, resounding far, 

When reconciling Wisdom comes 
To heal the cruel wounds of war. 

Thought may the minds of men divide. 
Love makes the hearts of nations one; 

And so, thy soldier grave beside, 
We honor thee, Virginia's son. 



^ From At Sunset. Used by permission of, and by special , arrange- 
ment with, Houghton Mifflin Company. 



94 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 
THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), sixteenth president of 
the United States, delivered this immortal address on the 
battle-field at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on November 19, 
1863. On that occasion the place w^as dedicated as a 
national cemetery for the soldiers who fell during the 
three days' conflict, July 1-3, 1863. 

Four score and seven years ago our fathers 
brought forth on this continent a new nation, con- 
ceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition 
that all men are created equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing 
whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and 
so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a 
great battle-field of that war. We are met to dedi- 
cate a portion of that field as a final resting place 
for those who here gave their lives that that nation 
might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that 
we should do this. 

But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we can- 
not consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The 
brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, 
have consecrated it far above our poor power to 
add or detract. The world will little note nor long 
remember what we say here, but it can never forget 
what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather 
to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 95 

they who fought here have thus far so nobly 
advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated 
to the great task remaining before us — that from 
these honored dead we take increased devotion to 
that cause for which they gave the last full measure 
of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these 
dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, 
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and 
that government of the people, by the people, for 
the people, shall not perish from the earth. 



THE DEATH OE LINCOLN 

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

Mr. Bryant grieved deeply at the death of the President, 
for they had been friends from the day in 1859 when 
Bryant had presided at a meeting addressed by Lincoln. 
Lincoln said then: "It was worth the journey to the East 
to see such a man." But before this, in 1832, the poet had 
by chance seen the future president leading forth a com- 
pany of Illinois volunteers across the prairie to the Black 
Hawk War. 

Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare. 

Gentle and merciful and just! 
Who, in the fear of God, didst bear 

The sword of power, a nation's trust! 

In sorrow by thy bier we stand. 
Amid the awe that hushes all, 



96 Americaji Patriotic Prose and Verse 

And speak the anguish of a land 
That shook with horror at thy fall. 

Thy task is done ; the bond are free : 
We bear thee to an honored grave, 

Whose proudest monument shall be 
The broken fetters of the slave. 

Pure was thy life; its bloody close 

Hath placed thee with the sons of light, 

Among the noble host of those 

Who perished in the cause of Right. 



O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN l^ 

WALT WHITMAN 

Walt Whitman (1819-1892), the 'Toet of Democracy," 
In 1862 entered upon three years of service as a volunteer 
nurse in the hospitals near Washington. During this time 
he ministered to over one hundred thousand sick and 
wounded Union and Confederate soldiers. He was an 
ardent admirer of President Lincohi, and out of his grief 
over the President's tragic death came the inspiration for 
this beautiful elegy. 

O Captain ! my Captain ! our fearful trip is done. 
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we 
sought is won, 



1 From Selections from the Prose and Poetry of Walt Whitman, 
Small, Maynard & Co.; used by permission of the publishers and Horace 
Traubel. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 97 

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all 

exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim 
and daring; 
But O heart ! heart ! heart ! 
O the bleeding drops of red, 

Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead. 

O Captain ! my Captain ! rise up and hear the bells ; 
Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you the 

bugle trills, 
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths — for you 

the shores a-crowding, 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager 
faces turning; 
Here Captain! dear father! 
This arm beneath your head ! 

It is some dream that on the deck 
You've fallen cold and dead. 

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and 

still, 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor 

will, 
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage 

closed and done, 
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with 

object won; 



98 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Exult O shores, and ring O bells ! 
But I, with mournful tread. 

Walk the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead. 



WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN ^ 

CHAUNCEY MITCHELL DEPEW 

Chauncey Mitchell Depew (1834-) has acquired national 
celebrity as an orator and after-dinner speaker. The 
selection given here is part of an address, "The Mutations 
of Time," delivered before the Lotos Club, New York 
City, on February 22, 1896. In that year, for the first time, 
Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays were celebrated as 
legal holidays. 

Never since the creation of man were two human 
beings so unlike, so nearly extremes or opposed to 
each other, as Washington and Lincoln. The one 
an aristocrat by birth, by breeding and association; 
the other in every sense and by every surrounding 
a democrat. As the richest man in America, a large 
slaveholder, the possessor of an enormous landed 
estate and the leader and representative of the prop- 
erty and the culture and the colleges of the Colonial 
period, Washington stood for the conservation and 
preservation of law and order. He could be a revo- 
lutionist and pledge his life and fortune and honor 



1 From The Mutations of Time. Parke, Austin and Lipscomb. Used 
by permission. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 99 

for the principles which in his judgment safeguarded 
the rights and liberties of his country. But in the 
construction of the Republic and in the formation 
of its institutions, and in the critical period of 
experiment until they could get in working order, 
he gave to them and implanted in them conservative 
elements which are found in no other system of 
government. And yet, millionaire, slaveholder, and 
aristocrat in its best sense, that he was, all his life; 
so at any time he would have died for the immortal 
principle put by the Puritans in their charter adopted 
in the cabin of the ^'Mayflower" and reenacted in 
the Declaration of Independence, of the equality of 
all men before the law, and of equal opportunity for 
all to rise. 

Lincoln, on the other hand, was born in a cabin 
among that class known as **poor whites" in slave- 
holding times, who held and could hold no position, 
and whose condition was so hopeless as to paralyze 
ambition and effort. His situation, so far as his 
surroundings were concerned, had considerable 
mental but little moral improvement by the removal 
to Indiana, and subsequently to Illinois. Anywhere 
in the Old World a man born amid such an environ- 
ment and teachings, and possessed of unconquerable 
energy and ambition and the greatest powers of 
eloquence and constructive statesmanship, would 
have been a socialist and the leader of a social revolt. 
He might have been an anarchist. His one ambition 



100 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

would have been to break the crust above him and 
shatter it to pieces. He would see otherwise no 
opportunity for himself and his fellows in social or 
political or professional life. But Lincoln attained 
from the log cabin of the poor white in the wilder- 
ness the same position which George Washington 
reached from his palatial mansion and baronial 
estate on the Potomac. He made the same fight, 
unselfishly, patriotically, and grandly for the preser- 
vation of the Republic that Washington had made 
for its creation and foundation. 

Widely as they are separated, these two heroes of 
the two great crises of our national life stand 
together in representing solvent powers, inspiring 
processes, and the hopeful opportunities of American 
liberty. The one coming from the top, and the 
other from the bottom, to the Presidency of the 
United States, the leadership of the people, the 
building up of government and the reconstruction 
of States, they superbly illustrate the fact that under 
our institutions there is neither place nor time for 
the socialist or the anarchist, but there is a place 
and always a time, notwithstanding the discourage- 
ments of origin or of youth, for grit, pluck, ambition, 
honesty, and brains 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 101 

From ^'ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD 
COMMEMORATION" ^ 

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

The "Harvard Commemoration Ode" is ranked by critics 
as the greatest single poem yet written in America. It was 
read on July 21, 1865, at the service held in commemoration 
of Harvard men who lost their lives in the Civil War. The 
day, the place, and the memories of his own grief as well 
as that of his Alma Mater combined to make the occasion 
one that would call forth the highest gifts of the poet. 
The effect of Lowell's reading of the ''Ode" upon the 
audience is described as being overpowering. His face, 
always expressive, seemed to be so transfigured and illu- 
mined by an inward light that people v^^ere unable to look 
away from it while they listened breathlessly to the beau- 
tiful stanzas. The passage about Lincoln was not in the 
"Ode" as originally recited, but was added immediately 
afterwards. 

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 

Whom late the Nation he had led, 
With ashes on her head, 
W^ept with the passion of an angry grief : 
Forgive me, if from present things I turn 
To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, 
And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. 

Nature, they say, doth dote, 

And cannot make a man 

Save on some worn-out plan, 

Repeating us by rote : 



^ From The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell. Used 
by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin 
Company. 



102 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

For him her Old- World moulds aside she threw, 
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 

Oif the unexhausted West, 
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
Wise, steadfast in the stren;^h of God, and true. 

How beautiful to see 
Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, 
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead ; 
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be. 

Not lured by any cheat of birth, 

But by his clear-grained human worth. 
And brave old wisdom of sincerity ! 

They knew that outward grace is dust ; 

They could not choose but trust 
In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, 

And supple-tempered will 
That bent like perfect steel to spring again and 

thrust. 
His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind. 
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, 
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind ; 
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined. 
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, 
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. 

Nothing of Europe here, 
Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, 

Ere any names of Serf and Peer 

Could Nature's equal scheme deface 

And thwart her genial will; 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 103 

Here was a type of the true elder race, 
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to 
face. 
I praise him not; it were too late; 
And some innative weakness there must be 
In him who condescends to victory 
Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait. 
Safe in himself as in a fate. 
So always firmly he: 
He knew to bide his time, 
And can his fame abide, 
Still patient in his simple faith sublime. 
Till the wise years decide. 
Great captains, with their guns and drums, 
Disturb our judgment for the hour, 
But at last silence comes ; 
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower. 
Our children shall behold his fame, 
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
New birth of our new soil, the first American. 



104 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM 
LINCOLN 1 

RICHARD WATSON GILDER 

In the Century Magazine for December, 1881, appeared 
an article by Leonard W. Volk, the sculptor, telling the 
circumstances under which he made the life-mask of 
Lincoln. In April, i860, Mr. Volk heard that Lincoln was 
in Chicago, and he determined to use this chance to obtain 
a plaster impression. Lincoln had not then been nominated 
for the presidency, but his debates with Douglas had made 
him famous. Mr. Volk found him in the courtroom, and 
quickly arranged for daily sittings. Every morning for a 
week Lincoln climbed the five flights of stairs to the sculp- 
tor's studio. He was then staying at the old Tremont 
House, which stood at the southeast corner of Lake and 
Dearborn streets. 

The life-mask was an entire success, and affords us 
the most exact image of Mr. Lincoln. Several months 
later the same sculptor made a cast of his hand. The 
two pieces, reproduced in bronze, as well as Volk's bronze 
bust of Lincoln, are preserved in the Art Institute of 
Chicago. 

This bronze doth keep tlie very form and mould 
Of our great martyr's face. Yes, this is he : 
That brow all wisdom, all benignity; 
That human, humorous mouth; those cheeks that 
hold 

Like some harsh landscape all the summer's gold; 
That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea 
For storms to beat on; the lone agony 



1 From The Complete Poetical Works of Richard Watson Gilder. 
Used by permission of Rodman Gilder, and by special arrangement 
with Houghton Mifflin Company. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 105 

Those silent, patient lips too well foretold. 

[Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men 
As might some prophet of the elder day — 
Brooding above the tempest and the fray 

With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken. 
A power was his beyond the touch of art 
Or armed strength — his pure and mighty heart. 



LINCOLN, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE^ 

EDWIN MARKHAM 

Edwin Markham (1852-) is best known as author of 
"The Man with a Hoe," by one critic called "the battle 
cry of the next thousand years." For some time Mr. 
Markham has worked effectively for child labor reforms 
and has thus given practical proof of the beliefs expressed 
in his poetry. The following lines were read at a Lincoln 
Birthday Dinner given in New York in 1900. 

When the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour 
Greatening and darkening as it hurried on. 
She left the Heaven of Heroes and came down 
To make a man to meet the mortal need. 
She took the tried clay of the common road — 
Clay warm yet with the ancient heat of Earth, 
Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy; 
Tempered the heap with thrill of human tears; 



^ The present version is a revised iorm of that printed first in Mr. 
Markham's Lincoln, and Other Poems. Doubleday, Page & Co., 1900. 
Used by permission of the author. 



106 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff. 
Into the shape she breathed a flame to light 
That tender, tragic, ever-changing face. 
Here was a man to hold against the world, 
A man to match the mountains and the sea. 

The color of the ground was in him, the red earth; 

The smack and tang of elemental things : 

The rectitude and patience of the cliff; 

The good- will of the rain that loves all leaves; 

The friendly welcome of the wayside well ; 

The courage of the bird that dares the sea; 

The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn; 

The mercy of the snow that hides all scars; 

The secrecy of streams that make their way 

Beneath the mountain to the rifted rock; 

The undelaying justice of the light 

That gives as freely to the shrinking flower 

As to the great oak flaring to the wind — 

To the grave's low hill as to the Matterhorn 

That shoulders out the sky. 

Sprung from the West, 
The strength of virgin forests braced his mind. 
The hush of spacious prairies stilled his soul. 
Up from log cabin to the Capitol, 
One fire was on his spirit, one resolve — 
To send the keen ax to the root of wrong. 
Clearing a free way for the feet of God. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 107 

And evermore he burned to do his deed 
With the fine stroke and gesture of a king: 
He built the rail-pile as he built the State, 
Pouring his splendid strength through every blow, 
The conscience of him testing every stroke. 
To make his deed the measure of a man. 

So came the Captain with the thinking heart; 
And when the judgment thunders split the house, 
Wrenching the rafters from their ancient rest. 
He held the ridgepole up, and spiked again 
The rafters of the Home. He held his place — 
Held the long purpose like a growing tree — 
Held on through blame and faltered not at praise, 
And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down 
As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs, 
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills, 
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky. 



108 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 
THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD^ 

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Mr. Long-fellow was married to Frances Appleton in 
1843. On their wedding journey Mr. and Mrs. Longfellow, 
with Mr. Charles Sumner, visited the Arsenal at Spring- 
field, Massachusetts. The origin of this poem is chronicled 
in an account of their visit, which reads : "While Mr. Sum- 
ner was endeavoring to impress upon the attendant that the 
money expended upon these weapons of war would have 
been much better spent upon a great library, Mrs. Long- 
fellow pleased her husband by remarking how like an organ 
looked the ranged and shining gun barrels which covered 
the walls from floor to ceiling, and suggested what mourn- 
ful music Death would bring from them. 'We grew quite 
warlike against war,' she wrote, 'and I urged H. to write 
a peace poem.' " From this hint came "The Arsenal at 
Springfield" some months later. 

This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling, 
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms ; 

But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing 
Startles the villages with strange alarms. 

Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary, 
When the death-angel touches those swift keys ! 

What loud lament and dismal Miserere 
Will mingle with their awful symphonies ! 

I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus, 
The cries of agony, the endless groan, 



1 From The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Long- 
fellow. Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Hough- 
ton Mifflin Company. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 109 

Which, through the ages that have gone before us. 
In long reverberations reach our own. 

On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer, 
Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's 
song, 

And loud, amid the universal clamor. 

O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong. 

I hear the Florentine, who from his palace . 

Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din. 
And Aztec priests upon their teocallis 

Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent's skin; 

The tumult of each sacked and burning village ; 

The shout that every prayer for micrcy drowns; 
The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage; 

The wail of famine in beleaguered towns; 

The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder. 
The rattling musketry, the clashing blade ; 

And ever and anon, in tones of thunder 
The diapason of the cannonade. 

Is it, O man, with such discordant noises. 
With such accursed instruments as these. 

Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices. 
And j arrest the celestial harmonies? 



110 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 



Were half the power that fills the world with terror, 
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and 
courts, 

Given to redeem the human mind from error. 
There were no need of arsenals or forts ! 

The warrior's name would be a name abhorred ! 

And every nation that should lift again 
Its hand against a brother, on its forehead 

Would wear forevermore the curse of Cain! 

Down the dark future, through long generations. 
The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease; 

And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations, 
I hear once more the voice of Christ say, "Peace !" 

Peace ! and no longer from its brazen portals 

The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies ! 

But beautiful as songs of the immortals. 
The holy melodies of love arise. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 111 
From "AN ODE FOR DECORATION DAY"i 

HENRY PETERSON 

Henry Peterson (1818-1891), journalist, publisher, and 
poet, was one of the first of many writers to commemorate 
our "Decoration Day." This poem will always be worthy 
of remembrance for the one line, "Foes for a day and 
brothers for all time." 

GALLANT brothers of the generous South, 
Foes for a day and brothers for all time, 

1 charge you by the memories of your youth. 
By Yorktown's field and Montezuma's clime,^ 
Hold our dead sacred — let them quietly rest 

In your unnumbered vales, where God thought best. 
Your vines and flowers learned long since to forgive. 
And o'er their graves a broidered mantle weave : 
Be you as kind as they are, and the word 
Shall reach the Northland with each summer bird, 
And thoughts as sweet as summer shall awake 
Responsive to your kindness, and shall make 
Our peace the peace of brothers once again, 
And banish utterly the days of pain. 

And ye, O Northmen ! be ye not outdone 

In generous thought and deed. 
We all do need forgiveness, every one ; 

And they that give shall find it in their need. 



1 From Poems by Henry Peterson. J. B. Lippincott Company. Used 
by permission. 

2 An allusion to the Revolutionary and Mexican wars. 



112 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 



Spare of your flowers to deck the stranger's grave, 

Who died for a lost cause — 
A soul more daring, resolute, and brave. 

Ne'er won a world's applause. 
A brave man's hatred pauses at the tomb. 
For him some Southern home was robed in gloom. 
Some wife or mother looked with longing eyes 
Through the sad days and nights with tears and 

sighs, 
Hope slowly hardening into gaunt Despair. 
Then let your foeman's grave remembrance share: 
Pity a higher charm to Valor lends, 
And in the realms of Sorrow all are friends. 



THE BLUE AND THE GRAY^ 

FRANCIS MILES FINCH 

Francis Miles Finch (1827-1907), jurist and educator, 
first showed his poetic ability when he delivered a mem- 
orable class poem upon his graduation at Yale in 1849. 
"The Blue and the Gray" appeared in the Atlantic Monthly 
in 1867. It was inspired by the fact that the women of 
Colum.bus, Mississippi, had shown themselves impartial in 
their tributes to the memory of the dead by placing flowers 
on the graves of both Confederate and Union soldiers. 

By the flow of the inland river, 

Whence the fleets of iron have fled, 
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver, 



1 From The Blue and the Gray and Other Verses. Henry Holt and 
Company. Used by permission. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 113 

Asleep are the ranks of the dead: 
Under the sod and the dew. 

Waiting the Judgment Day ; 
Under the one, the Blue ; 

Under the other, the Gray. 

These in the robings of glory. 

Those in the gloom of defeat, 
All with the battle-blood gory. 
In the dusk of eternity meet : 
Under the sod and the dew, 

Waiting the Judgment Day; 
Under the laurel, the Blue; 
Under the willow, the Gray. 

From the silence of sorrowful hours 

The desolate mourners go. 
Lovingly laden with flowers 

Alike for the friend and the foe : 
Under the sod and the dew, 

Waiting the Judgment Day; 
Under the roses, the Blue; 
Under the lilies, the Gray. 

vSo with an equal splendor 

The morning sun-rays fall, 
With a touch impartially tender, 

On the blossoms blooming for all : 
Under the sod and the dew, 



114 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Waiting the Judgment Day; 
Broidered with gold, the Blue; 
Mellowed with gold, the Gray. 

So, when the summer calleth. 
On forest and field of grain, 
With an equal murmur falleth 
The cooling drip of the rain: 
Under the sod and the dew. 

Waiting the Judgment Day; 
Wet with the rain, the Blue ; 
Wet with the rain, the Gray. 

Sadly, but not with upbraiding, 
The generous deed was done, 
In the storm of the years that are fading 
No braver battle was won : 
Under the sod and the dew, 

Waiting the Judgment Day; 
Under the blossoms, the Blue ; 
Under the garlands, the Gray. 

No more shall the war cry sever, 
Or the winding rivers be red ; 
They banish our anger forever 

When they laurel the graves of our dead ! 
Under the sod and the dew. 

Waiting the Judgment Day; 
Love and tears for the Blue ; 
Tears and love for the Gray. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 115 
WE KEEP MEMORIAL DAY^ 

KATE BROWNLEE SHERWOOD 

Mrs. Kate Brownlee Sherwood (1841-1914) was the 
founder of the Woman's ReHef Corps and served as its 
second president. She is best known as the author of army 
lyrics and poems written for the celebration of military 
occasions. 

When the May has culled her flowers for the sum- 
mer waiting long, 

And the breath of early roses woos the hedges into 
song, 

Comes the throb of martial music and the banners 
in the street, 

And the marching of the millions bearing garlands 
fair and sweet — 

'Tis the Sabbath of the Nation, 'tis the floral feast 
of May! 

In remembrance of our heroes 
We keep Memorial Day. 

They are sleeping in the valleys, they are sleeping 

'neath the sea. 
They are sleeping by the thousands till the royal 

reveille; 
Let us know them, let us name them, let us honor 

one and all, 



*• Used by permission of Isaac R. Sherwood. 



116 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

For they loved us and they saved us, springing at 

the bugle call; 
Let us sound the song and cymbal, wreathe the 
immortelles and bay. 

In the fervor of thanksgiving 
We keep Memorial Day. 



THE SOLDIERS' RECESSIONAL^ 

JOHN H. FINLEY 

John H. FInley (1863-) is an educator of interna- 
tional reputation. He has received honors from foreign 
governments, and at home has been appointed to serve on 
various educational commissions. As president of the 
University of the State of New York, Mr. Finley still finds 
time for occasional verse writing, for editing an important 
encyclopedia, and for numerous services to the cause of 
general education. 

Down from the choir with feebled step and slow, 
Singing their brave recessional they go, 

Gray, broken, choristers of war. 
Bearing aloft before their age-dimmed eyes. 
As 'twere their cross for sign of sacrifice. 

The flags which they in battle bore — 

Down from the choir where late with hoarse throats 
sang 



1 From Scrihner's Magazine. Copyright, 1905, by Charles Scribner's 
Sons. Used by permission of the author. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 117 

Till all the sky-arched vast cathedral rang 
With echoes of their rough-made song, 
Where roared the organ's deep artillery, 
And screamed the slender pipe's dread minstrelsy 
In fierce debate of right and wrong. 

Down past the altar, bright with flowers, they tread, 
The aisles 'neath which in sleep their comrades dead 

Keep bivouac after their red strife, 
Their own ranks thinner growing as they march 
Into the shadows of the narrow arch 

Which hides the lasting from this life. 

Soon, soon will pass the last gray pilgrim through 
Of that thin line in surplices of blue 

Winding as some tired stream a-sea; 
Soon, soon, will sound upon our list'ning ears 
His last song's quaver as he disappears 

Beyond our answering litany ;, 

And soon the faint antiphonal refrain, 
Which memory repeats in sweetened strain, 

Will come as from some far cloud-shore; 
Then, for a space the hush of unspoke prayer, 
And we who've knelt shall rise with heart to dare 

The thing in peace they sang in war. 



118 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 



ONE COUNTRY^ 

FRANK LEBBY STANTON 

Frank Lebby Stanton (1857-), the Georgia poet, has 
for many years served on the editorial staff of the Atlanta 
Constitution. His musical verses have such vigor and 
wholesomeness that they have made him known to all lovers 
of popular lyrics. Probably no other poet since Civil War 
days has more fittingly expressed the united spirit of our 
democracy. 

After all, 
One country, brethren ! We must rise or fall 
With the Supreme Republic. We must be 
The makers of her immortality; 

Her freedom, fame. 

Her glory or her shame — 
Liegemen to God and fathers of the free ! 

After all — 
Hark ! from the heights the clear, strong, clarion call 
And the command imperious : "Stand forth, 
Sons of the South and brothers of the North! 

Stand forth and be 

As one on soil and sea — 
Your country's honor more than empire's worth!" 

After all, 
'Tis Freedom wears the loveliest coronal; 
Her brow is to the morning; in the sod 



1 From Comes One With a Song. Copyright, 1898. Used by special 
permission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company. 



American Patriotic Prose and ' Verse 119 



She breathes the breath of patriots; every clod 

Answers her call 

And rises like a wall 
Against the foes of liberty and God! 



CENTENNIAL HYMN^ 

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807- 1892) was the poet of 
New England life. When he began writing, he used his 
poetic gilts in the cause of freedom, and it was not until 
the need for that service had passed that he turned to the 
themes which lay close to his heart — the beauties of 
nature, the joys of home life, and the eternal goodness of 
God. "Snowbound," his masterpiece, with its picture of 
domestic joys and sorrows and its clear-cut character por- 
trayals, is one of the finest descriptive poems in the lan- 
guage. It has been said of Whittier that more than any 
other American poet he diffused his own personality 
through all his writings. The simple truth, modesty, and 
beauty of his own nature appear in all his verse. 

The "Centennial Hymn" was written for the Interna- 
tional Exposition which celebrated the completion of our 
first century of independence. In that Exposition the arts 
and industries of all the world were represented. It was 
opened May lo, 1876, with more than one hundred thou- 
sand people present. Whittier's hymn was sung by a 
chorus of one thousand voices. 

Our fathers' God ! from out whose hand 
The centuries fall like grains of sand, 



1 From The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier. 
Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton 
Mifflin Company. 



120 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

We meet today, united, free, 
And loyal to our land and Thee, 
To thank Thee for the era done, 
And trust Thee for the opening one. 

Here, where of old, by Thy design, 
The fathers spake that word of Thine 
^^^hose echo is the glad refrain 
Of rended bolt and falling chain, 
To grace our festal time, from all 
The zones of earth our guests we call. 

Be with us while the New World greets 
The Old AVorld thronging all its streets. 
Unveiling all the triumphs won 
By art or toil beneath the sun ; 
And unto common good ordain 
This rivalship of hand and brain. 

Thou, who hast here in concord furled 
The war flags of a gathered world. 
Beneath our Western skies fulfill 
The Orient's mission of good-will, 
And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece, 
Send back its Argonauts of peace. 

For art and labor met in truce, 
For beauty made the bride of use. 
We thank Thee ; but, withal, we crave 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 121 

The austere virtues strong to save. 
The honor proof to place or gold, 
The manhood never bought nor sold! 

Oh, make Thou us, through centuries long, 
In peace secure, in justice strong; 
Around our gift of freedom draw 
The safeguards of thy righteous law : 
And, cast in some diviner mould, 
Let the new cycle shame the old ! 



OUR COUNTRY^ 

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

During the latter years of Mr. Whittier's life he was 
much sought after for poems to be read upon pubHc occa- 
sions. Whenever possible, he gladly complied with these 
requests. The present poem was written for a Fourth of 
July celebration at Woodstock, Connecticut, 1883. 

We give thy natal day to hope, 
O Country of our love and prayer! 

The way is down no fatal slope. 
But up to freer sun and air. 

Tried as by furnace fires, and yet 
By God's grace only stronger made. 



1 From The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier. 
Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton 
Mifflin Company. 



122 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

In future tasks before thee set 

Thou shalt not lack the old-time aid. 

The fathers sleep, but men remain 
As wise, as true, and brave as they ; 

Why count the loss and not the gain? 
The best is that we have today. 

Whatever of folly, shame, or crime, 
Within thy mighty bounds transpires. 

With speed defying space and time 
Comes to us on the accusing wires; 

While of thy wealth of noble deeds, 
Thy homes of peace, thy votes unsold. 

The love that pleads for human needs, 
The wrong redressed, but half is told! 

We read each felon's chronicle, 

His acts, his words, his gallow's mood; 

We know the single sinner well 
And not the nine and ninety good. 

Yet if, on daily scandals fed, 

We seem at times to doubt thy worth. 

We know thee still, when all is said, 
The best and dearest spot on earth. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 123 

From the warm Mexic Gulf, or where 

Belted with flowers Los Angeles 
Basks in the semi-tropic air, 

To where Katahdin's cedar trees 

Are dwarfed and bent by Northern winds. 

Thy plenty's horn is yearly filled ; 
Alone, the rounding century finds 

Thy liberal soil by free hands tilled. 

A refuge for the wronged and poor, 

Thy generous heart has borne the blame 

That, with them, through thy open door, 
The old world's evil outcasts came. 

But, with thy just and equal rule. 

And labor's need and breadth of lands. 

Free press and rostrum, church and school, 
Thy sure, if slow, transforming hands, 

Shall mould even them to thy design, . 

Making a blessing of the ban; 
And Freedom's chemistry combine 

The alien elements of man. 

The power that broke their prison bar 

And set the dusky millions free. 
And welded in the flame of war 

The Union fast to Liberty, 



124 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Shall it not deal with other ills, 

Redress the red man's grievance, break 

The Circean cup which shames and kills, 
And Labor full requital make ? 

Alone to such as fitly bear 

Thy civic honors bid them fall ? 
And call thy daughters forth to share 

The rights and duties pledged to all ? 

Give every child his right of school, 
Merge private greed in public good, 

And spare a treasury overfull, 
The tax upon a poor man's food ? 

No lack was in thy primal stock. 
No weakling founders builded here ; 

Thine were the men of Plymouth Rock, 
The Huguenot and Cavalier; 

And they whose firm endurance gained 
The freedom of the souls of men, 

Whose hands, unstained with blood, maintained 
The s wordless commonwealth of Penn. 

And thine shall be the power of all 
To do the work which duty bids. 

And make the people's council hall 
As lasting as the Pyramids ! 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 125 

Well have thy later years made good 
Thy brave-said word a century back, 

The pledge of human brotherhood. 
The equal claim of white and black. 

That word still echoes round the world, 

And all who hear it turn to thee, 
And read upon thy flag unfurled 

The prophecies of destiny. 

Thy great world-lesson all shall learn, 
The nations in thy school shall sit, 

Earth's farthest mountain-tops shall burn 
With watch-fires from thy own uplit. 

Great without seeking to be great 

By fraud or conquest, rich in gold, 
But richer in the large estate 

Of virtue which thy children hold, 

With peace that comes of purity 

And strength to simple justice due. 
So runs our loyal dream of thee; 

God of our fathers ! make it true. 

O Land of lands ! to thee we give 

Our prayers, our hopes, our service free; 

For thee thy sons shall nobly live, 
And at thy need shall die for thee ! 



126 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 
FOURTH OF JULY ODE^ 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

The Fourth of July Ode was sung at a breakfast given 
in the Town Hall at Concord, July 4, 1857, in order to raise 
funds for the improvement of the famous Sleepy Hollow 
Cemetery. 

Oh, tenderly the haughty day- 
Fills his blue urn with fire; 

One morn is in the mighty heaven. 
And one in our desire. 

The cannon booms from town to town, 

Our pulses beat not less, 
The joy-bells chime their tidings down, 

Which children's voices bless. 

For He that flung the broad blue fold 

O'ermantling land and sea. 
One-third part of the sky unrolled 

For the banner of the free. 

The men are ripe of Saxon kind 

To build an equal state — 
To take the statute from the mind 

And make of duty fate. 



1 From The Complete Poetical Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton 

Mifflin Company. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 127 

United States! the ages plead — 
Present and Past in under-song — 

Go put your creed into your deed, 
Nor speak with double tongue. 

For sea and land don't understand, 

Nor skies without a frown 
See rights for which the one hand fights 

By the other cloven down. 

Be just at home ; then write your scroll 

Of honor o'er the sea, 
And bid the broad Atlantic roll 

A ferry of the free. 

And henceforth there shall be no chain, 

Save underneath the sea 
The wires shall murmur through the main 

Sweet songs of Liberty. 

The conscious stars accord above, 

The waters wild below, 
And under, through the cable wove, 

Her fiery errands go. 

For He that worketh high and wise. 

Nor pauses in his plan, 
Will take the sun out of the skies 

Ere freedom out of man. 



128 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 
THE FOURTH OF JULY 

JOHN PIERPONT 

The Declaration of Independence was unanimously 
adopted by twelve colonies on the evening of July 4, 1776 ; 
New York followed on the ninth of July, as soon as her 
delegates could act. Rejoicing was widespread. In New 
York City the soldiers celebrated the event by overthrow- 
ing a statue of George III and turning it into bullets. 

Day of glory! Welcome day! 
Freedom's banners greet thy ray; 
See! how cheerfully they play 

With the morning breeze, 
On the rocks where pilgrims kneeled, 
On the heights were squadrons wheeled, 
When a tyrant's thunder pealed 

O'er the trembling seas. 

God of armies! did thy stars 
On their courses smite his cars ; 
Blast his arm, and wrest his bars 

From the heaving tide ? 
On our standard, lo ! they burn. 
And, when days like this return. 
Sparkle o'er the soldier's urn 

Who for freedom died. 

God of peace ! whose spirit fills 
All the echoes of our hills, 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 129 

All the murmur of our rills, 

Now the storm is o'er, 
Oh, let freemen be our sons. 
And let future Washingtons 
Rise, to lead their valiant ones 

Till there's war no more ! 



TRUE PATRIOTISM 

BENJAMIN HARRISON 

Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901) was the great-grandson 
of Benjamin Harrison, a signer of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. He was the twenty-third president of our coun- 
try, and on March 4, 1889, delivered his inaugural address, 
the peroration of which is given here. 

Let us exalt patriotism and moderate our party 
contentions. Let those who would die for the flag 
on the field of battle, give a better proof of their 
patriotism and a higher glory to their country by 
promoting fraternity and justice. A party success 
that is achieved by unfair methods or by practices 
that partake of revolution, is hurtful and evanescent, 
even from a party standpoint. We should hold our 
different opinions in mutual respect; and, having 
submitted them to the arbitrament of the ballot, 
should accept an adverse judgment with the same 
respect that we would have demanded of our oppo- 
nents if the decision had been more in our favor. 



130 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

No other people have a government more worthy 
of their respect and love, or a land so magnificent in 
extent, so pleasant to look upon, and so full of gen- 
erous suggestion to enterprise and labor. God has 
placed upon our head a diadem, and has laid at our 
feet power and wealth beyond definition or calcula- 
tion. But we must not forget that we take these 
gifts upon the condition that justice and mercy shall 
hold the reins of power, and that the upward ave- 
nues of hope shall be free for all the people. 

I do not mistrust the future. Dangers have been 
in frequent ambush along our path, but we have 
uncovered and vanquished them all. Passion has 
swept some of our communities, but only to give us 
a new demonstration that the great body of our 
people are stable, patriotic, and law-abiding. No 
political party can long pursue advantage at the ex- 
pense of public honor, or by rude and indecent 
methods, without protest and fatal disaffection in 
its own body. The peaceful agencies of commerce 
are more fully revealing the necessary unity of all 
our communities, and the increasing intercourse of 
our people is promoting mutual respect. We shall 
find unalloyed pleasure in the revelation which our 
census will make of the swift development of the 
great resources of some of the states. Each state 
will bring its generous contributions to the great 
aggregate of the nation's increase. And when the 
harvests from the fields, the cattle from the hills, 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 131 

and the ores from the earth, shall have been weighed, 
counted, and valued, we will turn from all to crown 
with the highest honor the state that has most pro- 
moted education, virtue, justice, and patriotism 
among its people. 



CUBA LIBRE^ 

JOAQUIN MILLER 

The cry of distress from Cuba, oppressed by Spain for 
centuries, finally grew so insistent that America could 
endure it no longer. On April ii, 1898, President McKin- 
ley sent a message to Congress in which he said, "In the 
name of humanity, in the name of civilization, in behalf of 
endangered American interests .... the war in Cuba 
must stop." On April 19, the anniversary of the battle of 
Lexington, Congress resolved that Cuba must be free and 
authorized the President to use his power to carry out the 
resolution. War was declared April 25. The United 
States had no intention to exercise sovereignty over Cuba; 
the war was undertaken solely for her rescue. 

Comes a cry from Cuban water — 

From the warm, dusk Antilles — 
From the lost Atlanta's daughter. 

Drowned in blood as drowned in seas ; 
Comes a cry of purpled anguish — 

See her struggles, hear her cries ! 
Shall she live, or shall she languish? 

Shall she sink, or shall she rise? 



1 Permission to use secured from the Harr Wagner Publishing Co., 
San Francisco, Cal., publishers of Joaquin Miller's complete works. 



132 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

She shall rise, by all that's holy ! 

She shall live and she shall last ; 
Rise as we, when crushed and lowly, 

From the blackness of the past. 
Bid her strike ! Lo, it is written 

Blood for blood and life for life. 
Bid her smite, as she is smitten ; 

Behold, our stars were born of strife! 

Once we flashed her lights of freedom. 

Lights that dazzled her dark eyes 
Till she could but yearning heed them. 

Reach her hands and try to rise. 
Then they stabbed her, choked her, drowned her 

Till we scarce could hear a note. 
Ah ! these rusting chains that bound her ! 

Oh ! these robbers at her throat ! 

And the kind who forged these fetters ? 

Ask five-hundred years for news. 
Stake and thumbscrew for their betters? 

Inquisitions! Banished Jews! 
Chains and slavery ! What reminder 

Of one red man in that land? 
Why, these very chains that bind her 

Bound Columbus, foot and hand ! 

She shall rise as rose Columbus 

From his chains, from shame and wrong — ■■ 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 133 

Rise as Morning, matchless, wondrous — 

Rise as some rich morning song, — 
Rise a ringing song and story, 

Valor, Love personified .... 
Stars and stripes espouse her glory, 

Love and Liberty allied. 



From "A MESSAGE TO GARCIA" ^ 

ELBERT HUBBARD 

Elbert Hubbard (1859-1915), lecturer and writer, was 
the original Roycrofter. The individual quality of his 
mind appears in all his biographical writings, essays, and 
editorials. He was a master of words and a man of ideas. 
When the Lusitania sank on May 7, 19 15, torpedoed off the 
Irish coast, Mr. and Mrs. Hubbard were among those lost. 

The "Message to Garcia" is the most widely known of 
the many literary pieces inspired by the Spanish-American 
war. This "preachment" was first printed in the Philistine 
Magazine for March, 1899. Since then it has undergone 
countless reprintings and translations into many foreign 
languages. 

Lieutenant Andrew S. Rowan left for Cuba on April 23, 
1898, and on May 11 won his way back to safety at Key 
West after enduring great hardship on his solitary, perilous 
journey. He was immediately promoted to the rank of 
lieutenant-colonel for his act. 

In all this Cuban business there is one man stands 
out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at 
perihelion. 



1 Used by permission of The Roycrofter Press. 



134 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

When war broke out between Spain and the 
United States, it was very necessary to communicate 
quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia 
was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba 
— no one knew where. No mail or telegraph mes- 
sage could reach him. The President must secure 
his cooperation, and quickly. 

What to do ! 

Some one said to the President, "There's a fellow 
by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if 
anybody can." 

Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be deliv- 
ered to Garcia. How ''the fellow by the name of 
Rowan" took the letter, sealed it up in an oil-skin 
pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed 
by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, 
disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came 
out on the other side of the island, having traversed 
a hostile country on foot and delivered his letter to 
Garcia, are things I have no special desire now to 
tell in detail. 

The point I wish to make is this : McKinley gave 
Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan 
took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?" 
By the Eternal ! there is a man whose form should 
be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in 
every college of the land. It is not book-learning 
young men need, nor instruction about this and that, 
but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 135 

them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concen- 
trate their energies; do the thing — "Carry a mes- 
sage to Garcia!" 



ONE BENEATH OLD GLORY^ 

ANONYMOUS 

When the United States declared war against Spain on 
April 25, 1898, our country was poorly prepared ; the regu- 
lar army was only 25,000 strong. President McKinley 
straightway called for 125,000 volunteers, and soon after 
for 75,000 more. By the end of August, 216,000 men had 
responded to the call of the President, many more than 
were needed for active service in the field. 

DoN^T you hear the tramp of soldiers? 
Don't you hear the bugles play ? 
Don't you see the muskets flashing 
In the sunlight far away ? 
Don't you feel the ground all trembling 
'Neath the tread of many feet? 
They are coming, tens of thousands, 
To the army and the fleet. 

They are Yankees, they are Johnnies, 
They're from North and South no more ; 
They are one, and glad to follow 
When Old Glory goes before. 



^ From Poems of American Patriotism. The Page Company,: 



136 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

From Atlantic to Pacific, 
From the Pine Tree to Lone Star, 
They are gath'ring round Old Glory, 
And they're marching to the war. 

Don't you see the harbors guarded 
By those bristling dogs of war? 
Don't you hear them growling, barking. 
At the fleet beyond the bar ? 
Don't you hear the Jack Tars cheering. 
Brave as sailor lads can be ? 
Don't you see the water boiling 
Where the squadron put to sea ? 

They are Yankees, they are Johnnies, 
They're for North and South no more ; 
They are one, and glad to follow 
When Old Glory goes before. 
From Atlantic to Pacific, 
From the Pine Tree to Lone Star, 
They have gathered 'round Old Glory, 
And they're sailing to the war. 

Don't you hear the horses prancing ? 
Don't you hear the sabres clash ? 
Don't you hear the cannons roaring ? 
Don't you hear the muskets crash ? 
Don't you smell the smoke of battle? 
Oh, you'll wish that you had gone, 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 137 

When you hear the shouts and cheering 
For the boys who whipped the Don ! 

There'll be Yankees, there'll be Johnnies, 
There'll be North and South no more, 
When the boys come marching homeward 
With Old Glory borne before. 
From Atlantic to Pacific, 
From the Pine Tree to Lone Star, 
They'll be one beneath Old Glory 
After coming from the war. 



WHEN THE GREAT GRAY SHIPS COME IN^ 

GUY WETMORE CARRYL 

Guy Wetmore Carryl (1873-1904), though but a young 
man at the time of his death, was ranked among the most 
promising of American writers. Much of his work was 
done in Paris, and in his magazine articles and stories 
he displayed a sympathetic understanding of French Hfe in 
all its varied phases rarely attained by a foreigner. This 
greatly endeared him to the hearts of the French people. 
The present poem celebrates the day, August 20, 1898, 
when the American squadron sailed into New York, just 
eight days after the signing of a protocol and the cessation 
of hostilities between the United States and Spain. 

To EASTWARD ringing, to westward ringing. 
O'er mapless miles of sea. 



1 From The Garden of Years. G. P. Putnam's Sons. Used by per- 
mission. 



138 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

On winds and tides the gospel rides 

That the furthermost isles are free; 
And the furthermost isles make answer. 

Harbor, and height, and hill. 
Breaker and beach cry, each to each, 

" 'Tis the Another who calls ! Be still !" 
Mother! new-found, beloved, 

And strong to hold from harm. 
Stretching to these across the seas 

The shield of her sovereign arm. 
Who summoned the guns of her sailor sons, 

Who bade her navies roam, 
Who calls again to the leagues of main. 

And who calls them this time home ! 

And the great gray ships are silent. 

And the weary watchers rest; 
The black cloud dies in the August skies. 

And deep in the golden west 
Invisible hands are limning 

A glory of crimson bars. 
And far above is the wonder of 

A myriad of wakened stars ! 
Peace! As the tidings silence 

The strenuous cannonade, 
Peace at last ! is the bugle blast 

The length of the long blockade; 
And eyes of vigil weary 

Are lit with the glad release. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 139 

From ship to ship and from lip to lip, 
It is "Peace ! Thank God for peace !" 

Ah, in the sweet hereafter 

Columbia still shall show 
The sons of those who swept the seas 

How she bade them rise and go — 
How, when the stirring summons 

Smote on her children's ear, 
South and North at the call stood forth 

And the whole land answered, "Here !" 
For the soul of the soldier's story 

And the heart of the sailor's song 
Are all of those who meet their foes 

As right should meet with wrong, 
Who fight their guns till the foeman runs, 

And then, on the decks they trod. 
Brave faces raise, and give the praise 

To the grace of their country's God ! 

yes, it is good to battle, 

And good to be strong and free. 
To carry the hearts of a people 

To the uttermost ends of sea. 
To see the day steal up the bay 

Where the enemy lies in wait, 
To run your ship to the harbor's lip 

And sink her across the strait — ^ 



^ On June 3, 1898, Richmond P. Hobson, of the American navy, at- 
tempted to blockade the Spanish fleet by sinking a collier, the Merrimac, 
across the harbor mouth at Santiago de Cuba. 



140 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

But better the golden evening 

When the ship round heads for home, 
And the long gray miles slip swiftly past 

In a swirl of seething foam, 
And the people wait at the haven's gate 

To greet the men who win ! 
Thank God for peace ! Thank God for peace, 

When the great gray ships come in ! 



THE FLAG OF OUR COUNTRY^ 

FRANK LEBBY STANTON 

She^s Up there — Old Glory — she's waving o'er- 

head; 
She dazzles the nations with ripples of red, 
And she'll wave for us living, or droop o'er us 

dead — 
She's the flag of our country forever! 

She's up there — Old Glory — no tyrant-dealt scars, 
Nor blur on her brightness — no stain on her 

stars ; 
The brave blood of heroes hath crimsoned her 

bars — 
She's the flag of our country forever! 



iProm Comes One With a Song. Copyright, 1898. Used by special 
permission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 141 



THE AMERICAN FLAG 

JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE 

Joseph Rodman Drake (1795-1820) began writing poetry 
when he was but fourteen years of age. His brief life was 
a continual struggle with poverty and ill health. The year 
before his death he wrote this oft-quoted poem. The line 
"The guard and glory of the world" originally ended the 
poem ; but Drake's dearly loved friend Fitz-Greene Halleck 
suggested the final four lines, and the author gladly added 
them. 

When Freedom from her mountain height, 

Unfurled her standard to the air, 

She tore the azure robe of night. 

And set the stars of glory there. 

She mingled with its gorgeous dyes 

The milky baldric of the skies, 

And striped its pure, celestial white 

With streakings of the morning light; 

Then from his mansion in the sun 

She called her eagle-bearer down, 

And gave into his mighty hand 

The symbol of her chosen land. 

Majestic monarch of the cloud. 
Who rear' St aloft thy regal form. 
To hear the tempest-trumpings loud. 
And see the lightning lances driven, 
When strive the warriors of the storm. 
And rolls the thunder drum of heaven. 



142 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Child of the sun! to thee 'tis given 
To guard the banner of the free, 
To hover in the sulphur smoke. 
To ward away the battle stroke, 
And bid its blendings shine afar, 
Like rainbows on the cloud of war, 
The harbingers of victory! 

Flag of the brave ! Thy folds shall fly. 
The sign of hope and triumph high! 
When speaks the signal trumpet tone, 
And the long line comes gleaming on. 
Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet. 
Has dimmed the glistening bayonet. 
Each soldier eye shall brightly turn 
To where thy sky-born glories burn, 
And, as his springing steps advance, 
Catch war and vengeance from the glance. 
And when the cannon-mouthings loud 
Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud, 
And gory sabres rise and fall 
Like sheets of flame on midnight's pall. 
Then shall thy meteor glances glow, 
And cowering foes shall sink beneath 
Each gallant arm that strikes below 
That lovely messenger of death. 

Flag of the seas ! On ocean wave 
Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave ; 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 143 

When death, careering on the gale, 
Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail, 
And frighted waves rush wildly back 
Before the broadside's reeling rack. 
Each dying wanderer of the sea 
Shall look at once to heaven and thee, 
And smile to see thy splendors fly 
In triumph o'er his closing eye. 

Flag of the free heart's hope and home! 

By angel hands to valor given; 
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome. 

And all thy hues were born in heaven. 
And fixed as yonder orb divine, 

That saw thy bannered blaze unfurled, 
Shall thy proud stars resplendent shine, 

The guard and glory of the world. 
Forever float that standard sheet ! 

Where breathes the foe but falls before us, 
With Freedom's soil beneath our feet. 

And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us ? 



144 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 
THE FLOWER OF LIBERTY^ 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

What flower is this that greets the morn. 
Its hues from Heaven so freshly born? 
With burning star and flaming band 
It kindles all the sunset land : 
Oh, tell us what its name may be — 
Is this the Flower of Liberty? 
It is the banner of the free, 
The starry Flower of Liberty! 



In savage Nature's far abode 

Its tender seed our fathers sowed ; 

The storm-winds rocked its swelling bud, l| 

Its opening leaves were streaked with blood. 

Till lo ! earth's tyrants shook to see 

The full-blown Flower of Liberty! 

Then hail the banner of the free, 

The starry Flower of Liberty! 

Behold its streaming rays unite, 
One mingling flood of braided light — 
The red that fires the Southern rose 
With spotless white from Northern snows, 
And, spangled o'er its azure, see 



1 From The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton 
Mifflin Company. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 145 

The sister Stars of Liberty! 

Then hail the banner of the free, 
The starry Flower of Liberty! 

The blades of heroes fence it round. 

Where'er it springs is holy ground; 

From tower and dome its glories spread; 

It waves where lonely sentries tread ; 

It makes the land as ocean free. 

And plants an empire on the sea! 
Then hail the banner of the free. 
The starry Flower of Liberty! 

Thy sacred leaves, fair Freedom's flower. 

Shall ever float on dome and tower, 

To all their heavenly colors true, 

In blackening frost or crimson dew — 

And God love us as we love thee, 

Thrice holy Flower of Liberty! 

Then hail the banner of the free, 
The starry Flower of Liberty! 



146 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 
E PLURIBUS UNUM 

GEORGE WASHINGTON CUTTER 

George Washington Cutter (1801-1865), ^ native of 
Massachusetts, settled in Kentucky and there practiced 
law. When volunteers w^ere called out for the Mexican 
War, Cutter went to the border as captain of a company; 
before leaving, however, he prepared his poems for printing 
in order that his wife might have some means of support 
during his absence. Liberal subscriptions for the book 
enabled her to keep back its publication until Mr. Cutter 
returned home, when he added poems written in camp. 
Thereafter he served as a clerk in the Treasury, being often 
called upon for public addresses on patriotic occasions. 

Though many and bright are the stars that appear 

In that flag, by our country unfurled — 
And the stripes that are swelling in majesty there 

Like a rainbow adorning the world — 
Their light is unsullied as those in the sky. 

By a deed that our fathers have done ; 
And they're leagued in as true and as holy a tie 

In their motto of "Many in One." 

From the hour when those patriots fearlessly flung 

That banner of star-light abroad, 
Ever true to themselves to that banner they clung, 

As they clung to the promise of God; 
By the bayonet traced at the midnight of war. 

On the fields where our glory was won — 
Oh ! perish the heart or the hand that would mar 

Our motto of ''Many in One." 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 147 

Mid the smoke of the contest, the cannon's deep roar, 

How oft it has gathered renown, 
While those stars were reflected in rivers of gore, 

Where the cross and the lion went down ; 
And though few were their lights in the gloom of 
that hour, 

Yet the hearts that were striking below 
Had God for their bulwark, and truth for their 
power, 

And they stopped not to number their foe. 

From where our green mountain tops blend with the 
sky 

And the giant Saint Lawrence is rolled. 
To the waves where the balmy Hesperides lie. 

Like the dream of some prophet of old. 
They conquered — and dying, bequeathed to our 
care 

Not this boundless dominion alone. 
But that banner whose loveliness hallows the air. 

And their motto of ''Many in One." 

We are many in one while there glitters a star 

In the blue of the heavens above; 
And tyrants shall quail, mid their dungeons afar. 

When they gaze on that motto of love. 
It shall gleam o'er the sea mid the bolts of the 
storm — 

Over tempest, and battle, and wreck; 



148 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

And flame where our guns with their thunder grow 
warm, 
'Neath the blood on the slippery deck. 

The oppressed of the earth to that standard shall fly 

Wherever its folds shall be spread ; 
And the exile shall feel 'tis his own native sky, 

Where its stars shall float over his head : 
And those stars shall increase till the fulness of time 

Its millions of cycles has run; 
Till the world shall have welcomed its mission sub- 
Hme, 

And the nations of earth shall be one. 

Though the old Alleghany may tower to heaven 

And the Father of Waters divide, 
The links of our destiny cannot be riven 

While the truth of those words shall abide. 
Then oh, let them glow on each helmet and brand 

Though our blood like our rivers shall run ; 
Divide as we may in our own native land, 

To the rest of the world we are one. 

Then up with the flag! Let it stream in the air 
Though our fathers are cold in their graves ; 

They had hands that could strike, they had souls 
that could dare, 
And their sons were not born to be slaves. 

Up, up with that banner! Where'er it may call, 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 149 

Our millions shall rally around ; 
And a nation of freemen that moment shall fall 
When its stars shall be trailed on the ground. 



OLD FLAG 

HUBBARD PARKER 

What shall I say to you, Old Flag? 
You are so grand in every fold, 
So linked with mighty deeds of old, 
So steeped in blood where heroes fell, 
So torn and pierced by shot and shell, 
So calm, so still, so firm, so true, 
My throat swells at the sight of you. 

Old Flag. 

What of the men who lifted you, Old Flag, 
Upon the top of Bunker's Hill; 
Who crushed the Briton's cruel will, 
'Mid shock and roar and crash and scream ; 
Who crossed the Delaware's frozen stream, 
Who starved, who fought, who bled, who died, 
That you might float in glorious pride, 

Old Flag? 

What of the women brave and true. Old Flag, 
Who, while the cannon thundered wild, 



150 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Sent forth a husband, lover, child ; 
Who labored in the field by day ; 
Who, all the night long, knelt to pray. 
And thought that God great mercy gave. 
If only freely you might wave. 

Old Flag? 

What is your mission now, Old Flag? 
What, but to set all people free, 
To rid the world of misery. 
To guard the right, avenge the wrong, 
And gather in one joyful throng 
Beneath your folds in close embrace 
All burdened ones of every race. 

Old Flag? 

Right nobly do you lead the way. Old Flag, 
Your stars shine out for liberty, 
Your white stripes stand for purity, 
Your crimson claims that courage high 
For Honor's sake to fight and die. 
Lead on against the alien shore ! 
We'll follow you e'en to Death's door. 

Old Flag! 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 151 
THE FLAG GOES BY^ 

HENRY HOLCOMB BENNETT 

Henry Holcomb Bennett (1863-) is well known as a 
painter of animals and birds, as an ornithologist, and as 
a writer of stories and occasional poems dealing with 
frontier and army life. 

Hats off! 

Along the street there comes 

A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums, 

A flash of color beneath the sky : 

Hats off! 

The flag is passing by! 

Blue and crimson and white it shines. 

Over the steel-tipped, ordered lines. 

Hats off! 

The colors before us fly; 

But more than the flag is passing by. 

Sea-fights and land-fights, grim and great, 
Fought to make and to save the State : 
Weary marches and sinking ships; 
Cheers of victory on dying lips; 

Days of plenty and years of peace; 
March of a strong land's swift increase; 



1 Originally published by the Youth's Companion. Copyright, 1907, by 
A. S. Barnes & Company. Used by permission. 



152 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 



Equal justice, right and law, 
Stately honor and reverend awe; 

Sign of a nation, great and strong 
To ward her people from foreign wrong 
Pride and glory and honor — all 
Live in the colors to stand or fall. 

Hats off! 

Along the street there comes 

A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums; 

And loyal hearts are beating high: 

Hats off! 

The flag is passing by ! 



DEAR LAND OF ALL MY LOVE^ 

SIDNEY LANIER 

Sidney Lanier (1842-1881) lived to produce only a small 
body of poetry, but one notable for rich melody and spiritual 
intensity. In spite of ill health and distracting duties he 
attained high place as a poet. It was in April, 1861, that 
Lanier entered the Confederate Army. In 1863 he was 
captured, and spent five months in prison before being 
exchanged. Then with his precious flute and a twenty- 
dollar gold piece found in his pocket when he was captured, 
the poet turned homeward, to resume once more his literary 
pursuits. 

The stanza below is from the cantata set to music by 
Dudley Buck and sung at the Centennial Exposition in 



1 From Poems by Sidney Lanier. Charles Scribner's Sons. Used by 
permission. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 153 

1876. After the rendition of Lanier's work President Grant 
declared the Exposition open, and from the first great 
crowds were in attendance. 

These are the words of the Good Angel in reply to the 
Chorus questioning in regard to the future of America. 

Long as thine Art shall love true love, 
Long as thy Science truth shall know. 
Long as thine Eagle harms no Dove, 
Long as thy Law by law shall grow. 
Long as thy God is God above. 
Thy brother every man below. 
So long, dear Land of all my love. 
Thy name shall shine, thy fame shall glow ! 



INAUGURATION DAY^^ 

RICHARD WATSON GILDER 

The first inauguration day was Thursday, April 30, 1789, 
the ceremonies taking place in the old Federal Hall, New 
York City, the first capital of the United States. A few 
months later, Philadelphia, then the most important city in 
the Union, became the seat of our government. But ten 
years later another change seemed necessary. In the 
autumn of that year the District of Columbia was created, 
with the new capital, Washington, as the permanent home 
of our governmental departments. Jefferson was the first 
president to be inaugurated in Washington, March 4 having 
been set by an act of Congress as the legal inauguration 
day. 



1 From The Complete Poetical Works of Richard Watson Gilder, 
Used by permission of Rodman Gilder, and by special arrangement 
with Houghton Mifflin Company. 



154 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

On this great day a child of time and fate 
On a new path of power doth stand and wait. 

Tho' heavy-burdened shall his heart rejoice, 
Dowered with a nation's faith, an empire's choice. 

Who hath no strength but that the people give, 
And in their wills, alone, his will doth live. 

On this one day, this, this, is their one man, 
The well-beloved, the chief American! 

Whose people are his brothers, fathers, sons: 
In this his strength, and not a million guns. 

Whose power is mightier than the mightiest crown, 
Because that soon he lays that power down. 

Whose wish, linked to the people^s, shall exceed 
The force of civic wrong and banded greed. 

Whose voice, in friendship or in warning heard. 
Brings to the nations a free people's word; 

And, where the oppressed out of the darkness grope, 
'Tis as the voice of freedom and of hope. 

Oh, pray that he may rightly rule the state. 
And grow, in truly serving, truly great. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 155 



LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD ^ 

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 

Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833-1908), tHougH best 
known as a poet and literary critic, was also a successful 
man of business. He aided in the construction and financ- 
ing of the first Pacific railway, and was for many years an 
active member of the New York Stock Exchange. The 
present poem refers to the Bartholdi statue, a gift to 
America from the people of France, which was unveiled 
on Bedloe's Island, New York Harbor, October 28, 1886. 

Warder at ocean's gate, 
Thy feet on sea and shore, 

Like one the skies await 

When time shall be no more ! 

What splendors crown thy brow? 

What bright dread angel Thou, 
Dazzling the waves before 
Thy station great? 

**My name is Liberty ! 

From out a mighty land 
I face the ancient sea, 

I lift to God my hand; 
By day in Heaven's light, 
'A pillar of fire by night, 

At ocean's gate I stand 
Nor bend the knee. 



1 From The Complete Poetical Works of Edmund Clarence Stedman. 
Used by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton 
MifHin Company. 



156 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

"The dark Earth lay in sleep, 
Her children crouched forlorn, 

Ere on the western steep 
I sprang to height, reborn: 

Then with a joyous shout 

The quickened lands gave out, 

And all the choir of morn 

Sang anthems deep. 

"Beneath yon firmament. 
The New World to the Old 

My sword and summons sent, 
My azure flag unrolled : 

The Old World's hands renew 

Their strength ; the form ye view 
Came from a living mould 
In glory blent. 

"O ye, whose broken spars 
Tell of the storms ye met, 

Enter ! fear not the bars 
Across your pathway set; 

Enter at Freedom's porch. 

For you I lift my torch. 
For you my coronet 
Is rayed with stars. 

"But ye that hither draw 
To desecrate my fee, 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 157 

Nor yet have held in awe 

The justice that makes free — ^ 

Avaunt, ye darkling brood! 

By Right my house hath stood : 
My name is Liberty, 
My throne is Law." 

O wonderful and bright, 

Immortal Freedom, hail! 
Front, in thy fiery might. 

The midnight and the gale; 
Undaunted on this base 
Guard well thy dwelling-place: 

Till the last sun grow pale 
Let there be light ! 



O BEAUTIFUL, MY COUNTRY^ 

FREDERICK L. HOSMER 

Frederick L. Hosmer (1840-), a clergyman, at present 
resides in California and is widely known as the author of 
hymns and patriotic verse. The following popular hymn 
was written in 1884. 

"O BEAUTIFUL, my country!" 

Be thine a nobler care, 
Than all thy wealth of commerce, 

Thy harvest waving fair; 



^ Used by permission of the author. 



158 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

Be it thy pride to lift up 
The manhood of the poor; 

Be thou to the oppressed 
Fair freedom's open door. 

For thee our fathers suffered, 

For thee they toiled and prayed ; 
Upon thy holy altar 

Their willing lives they laid. 
Thou hast no common birthright; 

Grand memories on thee shine, 
The blood of pilgrim nations, 

Commingled, flows in thine. 

O beautiful, our country! 

Round thee in love we draw; 
Thine is the grace of freedom. 

The majesty of law. 
Be righteousness thy scepter. 

Justice thy diadem; 
And on thy shining forehead 

Be peace the crowning gem. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 159 
THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO RULE^ 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-) in 1901 took up the labors 
of our third martyred president, William McKinley, and 
in 1904 was elected twenty-sixth president of the United 
States. This long term of high office was but a part of his 
constant service to country. He is known to all Americans 
as a vigorous defender of our institutions and as an untiring 
worker for good government in state and nation. 

The paragraphs printed below formed the peroration of 
his speech at Carnegie Hall, New York City, on the evening 
of March 20, 1912. 

Friends, our task as Americans is to strive for 
social and industrial justice, achieved through the 
genuine rule of the people. This is our end, our 
purpose. The methods for achieving the end are 
merely expedients, to be finally accepted or rejected 
according as actual experience shows that they work 
well or ill. But in our hearts we must have this lofty 
purpose, and we must strive for it in all earnestness 
and sincerity, or our work will come to nothing. 

In order to succeed we need leaders of inspired 
idealism, leaders to whom are granted great visions, 
who dream greatly and strive to make their dreams 
come true; who can kindle the people with the fire 
from their own burning souls. The leader for the 
time being, whoever he may be, is but an instrument, 
to be used until broken and then to be cast aside; 



1 Used by permission of Mr. Roosevelt, 



160 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

and if he is worth his salt, he will care no more when 
he is broken than a soldier cares when he is sent 
where his life is forfeit in order that the victory 
may be won. In the long fight for righteousness the 
watchword for all of us is, "Spend and be spent." 
It is of little matter whether any one man fails or 
succeeds; but the cause shall not fail, for it is the 
cause of mankind. 

We, here in America, hold in our hands the hope 
of the world, the fate of the coming years : and shame 
and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the light of 
high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the 
golden hopes of men. If on this new continent we 
merely build another country of great but unjustly 
divided material prosperity, we shall have done 
nothing; and we shall do little if we merely set the 
greed of envy against the greed of arrogance, and 
thereby destroy the material well-being of all of us. 
To turn this Government either into government by 
a plutocracy or government by a mob, would be to 
repeat on a larger scale the lamentable failures of 
the world that is dead. 

We stand against all tyranny, by the few or by 
the many. We stand for the rule of the many in the 
interest of all of us, for the rule of the many in a 
spirit of courage, of common sense, of high purpose; 
above all, in a spirit of kindly justice toward every 
man and every woman. We not merely admit, but 
insist, that there must be self-control on the part of 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 161 

the people, that they must keenly perceive their own 
duties as well as the rights of others; but we also 
insist that the people can do nothing unless they 
not merely have, but exercise to the full, their own 
rights. 

The worth of our great experiment depends upon 
its being in good faith an experiment — the first that 
has ever been tried — in true democracy on the scale 
of a continent, on a scale as vast as that of the 
mightiest empires of the Old World. Surely this 
is a noble ideal, an ideal for which it is worth while 
to strive, an ideal for which at need it is worth while 
to sacrifice much; for our ideal is the rule of all the 
people in a spirit of friendliest brotherhood toward 
each and every one of the people. 



162 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 
THE BROOKLYN NAVY YARD ADDRESS ^ 

WOODROW WILSON 

Woodrow Wilson (1856-), twenty-eighth president of 
the United States, delivered this memorial address on 
May II, 1914. On that day an American battleship brought 
home for burial the bodies of nineteen marines and sailors 
who had died in the course of duty at Vera Cruz, Mexico. 
It was on April 21 that our marines landed at Vera Cruz, 
after all other means had been tried to stop indignities 
offered our sailors when ashore and to American citizens 
throughout Mexico. The following day a larger landing 
party brought our total of men up to three thousand, and by 
night the city was wholly under our control. November 23 
saw the withdrawal of American troope, then under 
General Funston, following a satisfactory adjustment of 
disputed points with the de facto government. 

I KNOW that the feelings which characterize all 
who stand about me and the whole Nation at this 
hour are not feelings which can be suitably expressed 
in terms of attempted oratory or eloquence. They 
are things too deep for ordinary speech. Eor my 
own part, I have a singular mixture of feelings. 
The feeling that is uppermost is one of profound 
grief that these lads should have had to go to their 
death; and yet there is mixed with that grief a 
profound pride that they should have gone as they 
did, and, if I may say it out of my heart, a touch of 
envy of those who were permitted so quietly, so 
nobly, to do their duty. Have you thought of it, 
men? Here is the roster of the Navy — the list of 



1 Used by permission of the President. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 163 

the men, officers and enlisted men and marines — 
and suddenly there swim nineteen stars out of the 
list — men who have suddenly been lifted into a 
firmament of memory where we shall always see 
their names shine, not because they called upon us 
to admire them, but because they served us, without 
asking any questions and in the performance of a 
duty which is laid upon us as well as upon them. 

Duty is not an uncommon thing, gentlemen. Men 
are performing it in the ordinary walks of life all 
around us all the time, and they are making great 
sacrifices to perform it. What gives men like these 
peculiar distinction is not merely that they did their 
duty, but that their duty had nothing to do with 
them or their own personal and peculiar interests. 
They did not give their lives for themselves. They 
gave their lives for us, because we called upon them 
as a Nation to perform an unexpected duty. That 
is the way in which men grow distinguished, and 
that is the only way, by serving somebody else than 
themselves. And what greater thing could you serve 
than a Nation such as this we love and are proud 
of? Are you sorry for these lads? Are you sorry 
for the way they will be remembered ? Does it not 
quicken your pulses to think of the list of them? 
I hope to God none of you may join the list, but if 
you do you will join an immortal company. 

So, while we are profoundly sorrowful, and while 
there goes out of our hearts a very deep and affec- 



164 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

tionate sympathy for the friends and relatives of 
these lads who for the rest of their lives shall mourn 
them, though with a touch of pride, we know why 
we do not go away from this occasion cast down, 
but with our heads lifted and our eyes on the future 
of this country, with absolute confidence of how it 
will be worked out. Not only upon the mere vague 
future of this country, but upon the immediate 
future. We have gone down to Mexico to serve 
mankind if we can find out the way. We do not 
want to fight the Mexicans. We want to serve the 
Mexicans if we can, because we know how we would 
like to be free, and how we would like to be served 
if there were friends standing by in such case ready 
to serve us. A war of aggression is not a war in 
which it is a proud thing to die, but a war of service 
is a thing in which it is a proud thing to die. 

Notice how truly these men were of our blood. 
I mean of our American blood, which is not drawn 
from any one country, which is not drawn from any 
one stock, which is not drawn from any one language 
of the modern world; but free men everywhere have 
sent their sons and their brothers and their daugh- 
ters to this country in order to make that great 
compounded Nation which consists of all the sturdy 
elements and of aJl the best elements of the whole 
globe. I listened again to this list of the dead with 
a profound interest because of the mixture of the 
names, for the names bear the marks of the several 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 165 

national stocks from which these men came. But 
they are not Irishmen or Germans or Frenchmen or 
Hebrews or Italians any more. They were not when 
they went to Vera Cruz; they were Americans, 
every one of them, and with no difference in their 
Americanism because of the stock from which they 
came. They were in a peculiar sense of our blood, 
and they proved it by showing that they were of our 
spirit — that no matter what their derivation, no 
matter where their people came from, they thought 
and wished and did the things that were American; 
and the flag under which they served was a flag in 
which all the blood of mankind is united to make a 
free Nation. 

War, gentlemen, is only a sort of dramatic repre- 
sentation, a sort of dramatic symbol, of a thousand 
forms of duty. I never went into battle; I never 
was under fire ; but I fancy that there are some things 
just as hard to do as to go under fire. I fancy that 
it is just as hard to do your duty when men are 
sneering at you as when they are shooting at you. 
When they shoot at you, they can only take your 
natural life ; when they sneer at you, they can wound 
your living heart, and men who are brave enough, 
steadfast enough, steady in their principles enough, 
to go about their duty with regard to their fellow- 
men, no matter whether there are hisses or cheers, 
men who can do what Rudyard Kipling in one of 
his poems wrote, "Meet with triumph and disaster 



166 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

and treat those two impostors just the same," are 
men for a nation to be proud of. Morally speaking, 
disaster and triumph are impostors. The cheers 
of the moment are not what a man ought to think 
about, but the verdict of his conscience and of the 
consciences of mankind. 

When I look at you, I feel as if I also and we all 
were enlisted men. Not enlisted in your particular 
branch of the service, but enlisted to serve the coun- 
try, no matter what may come, even though we may 
sacrifice our lives in the arduous endeavor. We are 
expected to put the utmost energy of every power 
that we have into the service of our fellow-men, 
never sparing ourselves, not condescending to think 
of what is going to happen to ourselves, but ready, 
if need be, to go to the utter length of complete 
self-sacrifice. 

As I stand and look at you today and think of 
these spirits that have gone from us, I know that the 
road is clearer for the future. These boys have 
shown us the way, and it is easier to walk on it 
because they have gone before and shown us how. 
May God grant to all of us that vision of patriotic 
service which here in solemnity and grief and pride 
is borne in upon our hearts and consciences ! 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 167 
A SOLDIER'S LETTER 1 

ALAN SEEGER 

Alan Seeger (1888-1916) left the shores of America in 
1912 never to return home. Before then he had spent his 
boyhood within sight of New York City, had travelled in 
Mexico and throughout the United States, and had gained 
his degree from Harvard University. In 1914 he joined 
the Foreign Legion of France and entered the Great War 
— an American citizen, but unwilling to await the entry 
of his own country in the fight for human liberty. On 
July 4, 1916, he fell in action in the village of Belloy-en- 
Santerre, leaving behind only a sheaf of noble poems and 
a few letters. On June 18, 1915, he wrote to his mother; 

You must not be anxious about my not coming 
back. The chances are about ten to one that I will. 
But if I should not, you must be proud, like a 
Spartan mother, and feel that it is your contribution 
to the triumph of the cause whose righteousness you 
feel so keenly. Everybody should take a part in this 
struggle which is to have so decisive an effect, not 
only on the nations engaged but on all humanity. 
There should be no neutrals, but everyone should 
bear some part of the burden. If so large a part 
should fall to your share, you would be in so far 
superior to other women and should be correspond- 
ingly proud. There would be nothing to regret, for 
I could not have done otherwise than what I did, 
and I think I could not have done better. Death is 



1 From Alan Seeger's Letters and Diary. Published with permission 
of, and by special arrangement with the publishers, Charles Scribner's 
Sons. 



168 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

nothing terrible after all. It may mean something 
even more wonderful than life. It cannot possibly 
mean anything worse to the good soldier. 



AMERICA RESURGENT^ 

WENDELL PHILLIPS STAFFORD 

Wendell Phillips Stafford (1861-) is only an occa- 
sional writer of verse. For over twenty years he has 
served his country as a jurist, being now Associate Justice 
of the Supreme Court of Washington, D, C. These lines 
praise America for breaking off diplomatic relations with 
Germany and thus becoming an active participant in the 
Great War. 

She is risen from the dead ! 
Loose the tongue and lift the head; 

Let the sons of light rejoice. 
She has heard the challenge clear ; 
She has answered, "I am here" ; 

She has made the stainless choice. 

Bound with iron and with gold — 
But her limbs they could not hold 

When the word of words was spoken; 
Freedom calls — ^ 

The prison walls 

Tumble, and the bolts are broken ! 



^ Used by permission of the author. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 169 

Hail her! She is ours again — 
Hope and heart of harassed men 

And the tyrants' doom and terror 
Send abroad the old alarms; 
Call to arms, to arms, to arms. 

Hands of doubt and feet of error! 

Cheer her ! She is free at last, 
With her back upon the past, 

With her feet upon the bars. 
Hosts of freedom sorely prest, 
Lo, a light is in the west 

And a helmet full of stars ! 



THE ROAD TO FRANCE^ 

DANIEL M. HENDERSON 

In the spring of 1917 a prize of two hundred and fifty 
dollars was offered by the National Arts Club of New York 
City for the best patriotic poem. Mr. Henderson's stirring 
song was chosen from some four thousand entries. 

Thank God, our liberating lance 

Goes flaming on the way to France ! 

To France — the trail the Gurkhas found ; 

To France — old England's rallying-ground ! 

To France — the path the Russians strode ! 

To France — the Anzec's glory road ! 

To France — where our Lost Legion ran 



Used by permission of the National Arts Club, 



k I 



170 American Patriotic Prose and Verse 

To fight and die for God and man ! 
To France — with every race and breed 
That hates Oppression's brutal creed ! 

Ah, France, how could our hearts forget 
The path by which came Lafayette ? 
How could the haze of doubt hang low 
Upon the road of Rochambeau? 
How was it that we missed the way 
Brave Joffre leads along today? 
At last, thank God ! At last, we see 
There is no tribal Liberty! 
No beacon lighting just our shores. 
No Freedom guarding but our doors. 
The flame she kindled for our sires 
Burns now in Europe's battle-fires. 
The soul that led our fathers west 
Turns back to free the world opprest. 

Allies, you have not called in vain ; 

We share your conflict and your pain. 

*'01d Glory," through new stains and rents. 

Partakes of Freedom's sacraments. 

Into that hell his will creates 

We drive the foe — his lusts, his hates. 

Last come, we will be last to stay. 

Till Right has had her crowning day. 

Replenish, comrades, from our veins 

The blood the sword of despot drains. 



American Patriotic Prose and Verse 171 

And make our eager sacrifice 

Part of the freely rendered price 

You pay to lift humanity — 

You pay to make our brothers free. 

See, with what proud hearts we advance 

To France! 



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